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| #Post#: 27808-------------------------------------------------- | |
| Events in India | |
| By: Kerry Date: April 30, 2021, 7:57 pm | |
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| I'm beginning to think PM Modi has lost his mind. I never cared | |
| for him since I didn't like his nationalistic tendency and how | |
| he undermined India's identity as a secular country with no | |
| government preference for any religion. I don't know why the | |
| Indian people elected him to office after how he behaved in 2002 | |
| when he was Chief Minister of Gujarat. I think he should have | |
| been put on trial for war crimes. How he treated Muslims and | |
| Pakistanis then showed how he would exploit fear and biases to | |
| gain power for himself. | |
| The world didn't pay much attention to what he did in 2002. | |
| Obama didn't mention it that I can remember, and Trump and | |
| Biden haven't. It made the news in a few places, and the | |
| Guardian published a piece about it right before he was elected | |
| PM. So for a little history: | |
| April 2014 | |
| https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/apr/07/narendra-modi-massacre-ne… | |
| Modi bears a responsibility for some of the worst religious | |
| violence ever seen in independent India � but there's nothing | |
| like looking like a winner to attract apologists. And the | |
| standard apology for Modi comes in two parts. First, there is | |
| normally an acknowledgement that the chief minister of Gujarat | |
| bears some vague responsibility for the orgy of killing and rape | |
| that engulfed his state in 2002 � but, um, wasn't that all a | |
| long time ago? And hasn't he behaved himself since � or, as the | |
| FT put it yesterday, done his best to "downplay tensions" | |
| between Hindus and Muslims? This is followed by pointing to | |
| Gujarat's rapid economic development and an appeal: shouldn't | |
| the rest of India enjoy some Modinomics? Or, as Gurcharan Das, | |
| the former head of Procter & Gamble India, put it in a piece for | |
| the Times of India last weekend: "There will always be a | |
| trade-off in values at the ballot box and those who place | |
| secularism above demographic dividend are wrong and elitist." | |
| I try not to forget such things as they are indications about | |
| what motivates people. The people of India either forgot about | |
| it or maybe some of them voted for him because he was a bigot. | |
| Perhaps some thought he would protect them against Muslims? | |
| Now let's come back to 2021. With regional elections in the | |
| works, Modi decided using public events to campaign was fine. | |
| Covid had already become a major health care crisis -- this | |
| video was posted on April 18. | |
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M1NZcHOihu8 | |
| Here is Modi saying he was "elated" by the size of the crowd. | |
| Video was posted on April 17. | |
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W5jzuE866lo | |
| That's almost nothing though compared to the number of people | |
| who attended the popular Hindu festival this month. Video is | |
| from April 12. Modi's government allowed it. | |
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJ-dIEsDju4 | |
| This article from NPR is dated April 13. | |
| https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2021/04/13/986686352/mill… | |
| One of the largest gatherings of people in the world continues | |
| in northern India amid a sharp rise in coronavirus cases and a | |
| weakening supply of vaccines. | |
| Almost 3 million Hindu pilgrims have bathed in the Ganges River | |
| as part of this year's Kumbh Mela festival, raising concerns | |
| that the festival could become a super spreader event. On | |
| Monday, the festival's second-holiest day, India's Health | |
| Ministry reported nearly 170,000 new coronavirus infections. | |
| India's total caseload has become the second-highest in the | |
| world after the United States. | |
| On the banks of the Ganges, Hindu prayer music is interrupted by | |
| whistles from police, trying unsuccessfully to enforce social | |
| distancing rules. | |
| Police are using artificial intelligence-enabled surveillance | |
| cameras to spot people not wearing masks. But because of the | |
| huge crowds, it's practically impossible to issue fines on those | |
| not abiding by the rules, Sanjay Gunjyal, who's in charge of | |
| security for the festival, told local media. | |
| Of course, things got worse. This article was published today: | |
| https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/mumbai-closes-covid-vaccine-centers-india-s-… | |
| As the Covid-19 crisis spiraled out of control across India, the | |
| government announced that vaccination centers in Mumbai, India's | |
| largest city, were to close for three days from Friday. | |
| The closure of the 94 centers was due to �non-availability of | |
| vaccine stock,� the municipal government said in a tweet on | |
| Thursday evening. | |
| �All efforts are being made to make more stock available and | |
| resume the drive.� | |
| Yet India is the world's largest producer of vaccines. ??? | |
| India recorded 386,452 cases of Covid-19 on Friday, setting yet | |
| another world record for daily cases. On Thursday, the country�s | |
| official death toll passed 200,000 but experts believe the | |
| actual number could be 5 to 10 times higher, Reuters reported. | |
| India has administered just over 150 million vaccinations, | |
| according to the Health Ministry, a tiny proportion of its | |
| population of just under 1.4 billion people. As well as Mumbai, | |
| several other Indian states have also run out of vaccines, | |
| Reuters reported. | |
| The crisis has overwhelmed the country�s hospitals and | |
| moratoriums, forcing cities to adopt mass cremations in public | |
| spaces. | |
| It was predictable, so why did the Modi government allow the | |
| massive religious festival and the election events? | |
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