India’s Pandemic Disaster Has Finally Slowed Modi’s Unstoppable Rise – By Salil Tripathi
After the spectacular failure of the U.S.-sponsored invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs, then-President John F. Kennedy did the honorable thing: He took full responsibility for the fiasco…. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has taken the opposite path and is getting punished at the polls.
Faced with an even bigger disaster – a devastating COVID-19 outbreak with a projected 1 million deaths by the end of July amid shortages of ambulances, oxygen, and vaccines—Modi is blaming anyone but himself. His lack of leadership likely played a major role in recent elections in West Bengal, India’s fourth-most populous state, where voters handed Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) a resounding defeat….
Modi has been silent about why massive rallies were allowed to take place for the elections. He meekly asked devotees not to go to Haridwar, a halfhearted plea most of them ignored. Modi took no blame. But now the public mood has turned from despair and sadness to anger….
