Ankita Rao Modi’s government had a choice between saving lives and saving face. It has chosen the latter Afew 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 to the Indian national health ministry in New Delhi, my colleague and I […]

County reports more than 400,000 new infections but experts suspect figures are gross underestimate Covid-19 deaths surged past 4,000 for the first time in India on Saturday in one of the world’s worst outbreaks. India reported a national record of 4,187 new deaths on Saturday. New Delhi has struggled to contain the outbreak, which has overwhelmed its […]

The pandemic overwhelming the big cities is reaching areas of Bihar where there is one doctor for 40,000 people Manoj Chaurasia in Bihar and Hannah Ellis-Petersen in Delhi In the small rural village of Kathail, in the east of India’s poorest state, Bihar, access to healthcare has always been scarce. But when 34-year-old Umakant Singh fell sick with […]

India’s tragedy could be followed by Africa’s, campaigners warn, as wealthy nations fail to extend vaccines – and decide who will live or die The past seven days has been a picture of two pandemics. Among the world’s richest nations, lockdowns and well-resourced vaccine campaigns, which have monopolised the early global supply of doses, have […]

At least 90 more corpses wash up in Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh as virus continues spreading into poor rural areas At least 90 more bodies of suspected Covid-19 victims have washed up in rivers in India, as the virus continues to spread into poor rural areas and the country recorded its highest daily death […]

From an approval rating of 80% earlier in the year, now tough questions are being asked of PM’s leadership Hannah Ellis-Petersen in Delhi The missing persons complaint was filed at Parliament Street police station in Delhi as a matter of some urgency: it concerned the “disappearance of Prime Minister Narendra Modi” and 10 of his cabinet […]

Rukmini S Instead of sequencing or data collection, the government is offering patriotic bluster in the face of this deadly second wave A train passenger is tested for Covid after arriving in Mumbai. Photograph: Sujit Jaiswal/AFP/Getty ImagesThu 20 May 2021 12.45 BST Last modified on Thu 20 May 2021 15.54 BST The variant that threatens […]

There is no official record of the number of bodies that have been found over the past two weeks in the Ganges that flows through Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. Photograph: Rajesh Kumar Singh/AP Stigma and cost of wood leave families with no choice but to immerse their dead in river Coronavirus – latest updates See […]

Our South Asia correspondent reflects on a catastrophe that is now affecting the lives of almost everyone in the country Funeral pyres for Covid-19 victims burning at a mass cremation site set up in New Delhi. Photograph: Altaf Qadri/APHannah Ellis-Petersen, as told to Sophie Zeldin-O’NeillMon 3 May 2021 07.00 BST 2,467 You recently lost a […]