{"id":31802,"date":"2021-05-06T19:17:05","date_gmt":"2021-05-06T10:17:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/commentisfree\/2021\/may\/06\/india-covid-crisis-narenda-modi-government-hiding"},"modified":"2021-05-06T19:17:05","modified_gmt":"2021-05-06T10:17:05","slug":"india-is-hiding-its-covid-crisis-and-the-whole-world-will-suffer-for-it-ankita-rao","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/?p=31802","title":{"rendered":"India is hiding its Covid crisis \u2013 and the whole world will suffer for it | Ankita Rao"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Modi\u2019s government had a choice between saving lives and saving face. It has chosen the latter<\/p>\n<p>A few years ago, as Narendra Modi came into power, I worked on an <a href=\"http:\/\/america.aljazeera.com\/articles\/2016\/1\/11\/malaria-crisis-india-doesnt-want-to-acknowledge.html\">investigative report<\/a> about India hiding its malaria deaths. In traveling from tribal Odisha to the Indian national health ministry in New Delhi, my colleague and I watched thousands of cases disappear: some malaria deaths, first noted in handwritten local health ledgers, never appeared in central government reports; other malaria deaths were magically transformed into deaths of heart attack or fever. The discrepancy was massive: India reported 561 malaria deaths that year. Experts predicted the actual number was as high as 200,000.<\/p>\n<p> <span>Related: <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2021\/may\/05\/indias-neighbours-close-borders-as-covid-wave-spreads-across-region\">India\u2019s neighbours close borders as Covid wave spreads across region<\/a> <\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/commentisfree\/2021\/may\/06\/india-covid-crisis-narenda-modi-government-hiding\">Continue reading&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Modi\u2019s government had a choice between saving lives and saving face. It has chosen the latterA few years ago, as Narendra Modi came into power, I worked on an investigative report about India hiding its malaria deaths. In traveling from tribal Odisha t&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2162,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sns_share_botton_hide":"","vkExUnit_sns_title":"","_vk_print_noindex":"","sitemap_hide":"","_veu_custom_css":"","veu_display_promotion_alert":"","vkexunit_cta_each_option":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1066,62,914,433,61,42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-31802","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-coronavirus","category-india","category-infectious-diseases","category-narendra-modi","category-south-and-central-asia","category-world-news"],"aioseo_notices":[],"veu_head_title_object":{"title":"","add_site_title":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31802","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2162"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=31802"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31802\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31803,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31802\/revisions\/31803"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=31802"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=31802"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=31802"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}