Many Indians pilloried Prime Minister Narendra Modi for his response to a scary rise in coronavirus cases, disgusted at addressing tens of thousands at electoral rallies and bringing Hindu devotees together for a festival.
Tags like #ResignModi and #SuperSpreaderModi have become popular on Twitter in the past two days as bodies piled up in morgues and crematoriums, and desperate cries for hospital beds, medical oxygen and coronavirus tests flooded social media.
Modi came to power in 2014 with the vast majority of individual parties in decades and is not used to such public toasting.
He has previously lost support in pursuing unpopular reforms, particularly after decommissioning high-denomination banknotes overnight in 2016 and last year, when his agrarian reforms sparked massive protests from angry farmers for months on end.
But this is different. The economy is struggling to recover from a month-long lockdown last year, but despite all the hardships that were then suffered, the second wave of the coronavirus epidemic is proving more deadly than the first.
India is currently registering more new cases of coronavirus than any other country, and this week it is expected to rise above the tide of the epidemic in the United States, when daily new cases peaked at nearly 300,000 in early January. read more
Deaths in India have risen to nearly 179,000. read more
Still, Modi and his ministers campaigned heavily ahead of the state elections in West Bengal, where opinion polls showed that the Prime Minister’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was in a close race with a regional party that rules the state.
“You hold meetings while people go to funerals,” Akhilesh Jha, the head of data for the Federal Ministry of Science and Technology, wrote in Hindi on LinkedIn, in a rare public outburst from a government official.
“People will hold you accountable, you will keep your meetings.”
Several other government officials privately shared similar feelings with Reuters.
The eight-stage vote in West Bengal ends April 29.
Whatever happens there, Modi doesn’t have to worry about a national vote until 2024, but right now it’s hard to say when the coronavirus epidemic in India will abate.
A government spokesman did not respond to questions about criticism of Modi. But Piyush Goyal, the Minister of Railways, Trade and Industry, told Reuters television partner ANI that Modi worked many hours a day to deal with the crisis.
On Saturday, Modi requested that religious leaders only symbolically celebrate a festival known as Kumbh Mela, after tens of thousands of Hindu devotees gathered daily to immerse themselves in the Ganges.
But that was on the 17th day of the festival, scheduled for the end of April, and it has yet to be officially called off, despite authorities discovering hundreds of infections among participants who had poured in from all over the country. read more
While not in power in the state, the main national opposition party in Congress called off election rallies in Bengal on Sunday. But the BJP has insisted that its candidates have the “constitutional right” to campaign for at least 14 days.
COVID-19 cases in Bengal, meanwhile, have quadrupled since the beginning of April, and at least three election participants have died.
“How many deaths does it take before he knows that too many people have died?” Nirupama Menon Rao, a former Secretary of State, asked on Twitter.
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