Recorded video of an important discussion hosted by the Indian Scientists Response to COVID-19. The panel had Rukmini S, Shankar and Prabhat Jha and discussed estimates of excess mortality during the pandemic. I learned a lot while moderating the discussion and I would recommend the entire video.
The discussion is strictly scientific but this question has broader implications.
The context for the discussion is WHO’s estimate, released a couple of months ago, that there had been about 4.7 million excess deaths in India in 2020-21 due to the COVID-19 pandemic — about ten times the official figure. India is a large country but even in per-capita terms this is an extremely high toll. It puts India in the sorry company of countries like the United States that are well known to have mismanaged the pandemic.
This number is important, not just because we owe it to those whom we lost to at least count them, but also for those who are living. The pandemic served as a test of the public health system and of governance. Therefore an analysis of how these systems performed is revealing and must be used for reform and course-correction.
On the one hand, this high toll reveals systemic weaknesses in our healthcare system. Moreover, the lack of basic social security meant that people were unable to take the steps necessary to protect themselves.
But there is a second question. Given these systemic weaknesses, could India have done better if its government had simply taken better policy decisions during the pandemic?" It is clear that the answer is “yes”.
What is more, the government of India clearly agrees with this. The true death toll shows the failure of its pandemic-management policies. And so it has made the data as inaccessible as possible, and has tried its best to obfuscate issues. It is supported in this endeavour by a bunch of “modellers”, “scientists”, bureaucrats and an enormous propaganda system.
But even if this works for a while, this cannot work forever. There must be accountability. And hopefully the disastrous implications of “administration by masterstroke” — which we have had for a while now — will become clear to more people sooner rather than later.