Media across the world criticised Prime Minister Narendra Modi harshly for ignoring threat posed by the pandemic leading to the terrible surge that now has people dying in the streets. Popular brand newspapers went on rhetoric back to January, when Modi scorned on experts and scientists who warned his country faced a “tsunami” of infection. His premature triumphalism is now under fire from The Guardian, Wall Street, Journal, Time Magazine, BBC, The Economist, Al Jazeera, Times, Washington Post, New York Times etc.
The Guardian
In its editorial titled “The Guardian view on Modi’s mistakes; a pandemic that is out of control” the paper puts origins of India’s disastrous Covid response to prime minister Modi’s overconfidence. It described India of now as a living hell. With mortuaries full, bodies are left to decompose at home and warned of dead risking being left on the streets. The article likened Modi’s callousness to his former U.S. counterpart saying, like Donald Trump, Narendra Modi too would not give up campaigning on huge rallies even as the pandemic raged unabated. “Modi’s brand of Indian exceptionalism bred complacency,” said the editorial.
Times Magazine
TIME magazine titled its article “This is Hell. Prime Minister Modi’s Failure to Lead Is Deepening India’s Covid-19 Crisis.” Driving the point home, the magazine quoted a leading pulmonologist : “Our healthcare system has collapsed. We have let down our own people in the country. What can doctors do when our infrastructure is unable to take the patients, when there are no hospitals oxygen cylinders?’
Washington Post
The Washington Post squarely blamed the India covid disaster on a presumption of national greatness and resultant unpreparedness including vaccine production -all steming from Modi's complacent attitude as Covid tgihtened its grip getting deadlier in the current second wave.
