by KARAN THAPAR
The government’s top scientists have been giving interviews and speaking selectively to the media but haven’t shed light on what every Indian wants to know.
Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic last year, the Narendra Modi government has fielded three scientists to brief the media and the public at large. They are principal scientific adviser K. VijayRaghavan; NITI Aayog member and chief of national expert group on vaccines V.K. Paul; and Indian Council of Medical Research director-general Balram Bhargava.
Individually and collectively, they, along with various bureaucrats and ministers who purportedly have sought to inform and guide the public, have been far less forthcoming in handling questions than their counterparts in other democracies reeling from COVID-19, especially the UK and the US.
On behalf of The Wire, I have made multiple attempts to interview each of the three official experts over the past year as part of a series of interviews I have conducted with leading Indian and global experts on the pandemic and its effects. These requests, sadly, have all been unsuccessful. Since it is clear that they will not give us an interview, I would like to put in the public domain a set of questions that are top of my mind – in the hope that someone to whom they do consent to speak can ask them.
1. No doubt no one could have predicted the suddenness and severity of the second COVID-19 surge but was it not more than likely, if not almost inevitable, that there would be one? After all, if Europe and the US experienced second and third waves, was it credible to believe the impact of the spread in India would end with only one wave?
2. Did they advise Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the government to expect a second wave?
3. Given the second wave in Europe and the US was considerably worse than the first, did they advise the prime minister and the government that that could be the case in India as well?
The Wire for more