"Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday said he felt the pain people have endured amid the second wave of Covid-19 as he released the eighth instalment of over Rs 20,000 crore (Rs 200 billion) to more than 95 million farmers under the Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi (PM-KISAN) scheme via video-conferencing," Hindustan Times (HT). It answers Tavleen Singh who asked, "Is the Prime Minister privately tormented by the disease and death that has spread across the country on his watch," The Indian Express (TIE). "The Prime Minister's image has taken a huge hit. May I humbly suggest that it could improve considerably if he stopped work on the Central Vista project." That will never stop. "It will include futuristic offices for its political secretaries, an underground railway, and an opulent mansion for the 70-year-old premier, which was quietly slipped into the plans after they had been approved," Daily Mail. "For the first time since the Modi government came to power in 2014, senior Union ministers and top functionaries in the BJP and RSS are on the defensive and unsure of how -- or even what -- to communicate to the people as the second Covid curve rages across the country," TIE. "The country's second wave has devastated major cities and regional hubs, with hospitals running out of oxygen and medicine," CNN. "But in rural areas and far-flung villages, doctors and clinics are in even shorter supply -- leaving residents to fight for their lives without access to care." So what is the answer? Resort to tried and tested tactics. First is to throw handouts at the vote-bank, as Modi has done. The second is to deny, not just one elephant, but a herd of elephants, standing in the room. "Despite registering the highest number of cases globally every day, WHO report says India is yet to label itself in the category of community transmission (CT), opting instead for the lower, less serious classification called 'cluster of cases'," News 18. A sure-fire way of reducing infections is to reduce testing. "Bengaluru: Despite repeated warnings from members of the Covid Technical Advisory Committee (TAC) not to reduce testing, the Department of Health and Family Welfare has consistently reduced the number of tests over the last three weeks," The New India Express. Bengaluru is capital of Karnataka which has a BJP government. Death is absolute, so, in Modi's Gujarat, "Dainik Bhaskar reported that local bodies issued 123,871 death certificates between March 1 and May 10 compared to 58,000 in the same period last year. The data was based on disclosures by municipal authorities in 33 districts and eight major cities, the paper reported," HT. If nothing works, resort to old fashioned violence to put the fear of god into people. "A 19-YEAR-OLD school dropout, a 30-year-old e-rickshaw driver, a 61-year-old maker of wooden frames -- they are among 25 arrested by Delhi Police, in the middle of a raging pandemic, for allegedly pasting posters with comments critical of Prime Minister Narendra Modi regarding the Covid vaccination drive," TIE. Uttar Pradesh (UP) is ruled by a BJP government with three-quarter of seats in the assembly. "Among the states by the second wave of Covid-19, Uttar Pradesh exemplifies the mix of incompetence and callousness that has characterised the Indian states response to the crisis the most," wrote Profs Mahmudabad and Verniers. "Beyond denialism, the then Covid-positive chief minister Yogi Adityanath, announced that citizens reporting shortages would be detained under the National Security Act for 'spreading rumours' and 'spoiling the atmosphere' and that their property would be seized," TIE. This is not an empty threat as Shashank Yadav found, BBC. UP forced government school teachers to supervise panchayat elections last month. Unions say over 1000 have died of the infection, including 8-month pregnant Kalyani, wrote Barkha Dutt. All this carnage is because Modi has "an insatiable, almost suicidal appetite for risk born of a compulsion to keep reinforcing an already swollen image of himself," wrote Prem Shankar Jha. We Indians are sheep. We cooperate in our own slaughter.
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