The Modi Surge: COVID-19 Cases Overwhelm India’s Healthcare System as Gov’t Censors Critics

India has topped 18.3 million COVID-19 cases, after adding 1 million cases in just the past three days amid shortages in vital supplies and overwhelmed hospitals across the country.

Makeshift mass cremation facilities have been set up in parks and parking lots, with rows of bodies being burned on funeral pyres. With hospitals overflowing, some patients have been turned away and left to deal with their infections on their own.

“This is where Modi has led India,” says Indian journalist Rana Ayyub, who says the prime minister “clearly has no plan” for dealing with the crisis ravaging the country’s healthcare systems, particularly outside the major cities.

“There has always been a crisis of healthcare in rural India, but never has it been so acutely defined as it is now,” says Ayyub.

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