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The Briefing Room

India's Covid Catastrophe

The Briefing Room

BBC

News, News Commentary

4.8731 Ratings

🗓️ 29 April 2021

⏱️ 30 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In February India's governing party, the BJP, congratulated itself and its “visionary” leader, the prime minister, Narendra Modi,, for “defeating Covid.” Two months on India is in the midst of what one historian has termed “the gravest crisis the nation has faced since Partition” in 1947. Hundreds of thousands of new infections are reported every day and thousands of deaths. The peak may come in a few weeks. Meanwhile the country is short of hospital beds, oxygen and even wood for the funeral pyres. So what’s gone wrong? And what does India’s plight tell the rest of the world about the trajectory of the pandemic and when it might finally end?

Producers: Tim Mansel, Kirsteen Knight, Paul Moss Studio Engineer: James Beard Editor: Jasper Corbett

Transcript

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0:00.0

BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, podcasts.

0:05.4

Welcome to the briefing room with me, David Aronovich. In this edition, India's COVID disaster,

0:11.8

how did it come about and how can it be ended?

0:25.7

In February, India's governing party, the BJP,

0:30.2

passed a resolution which declared that India had defeated COVID under the visionary leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

0:35.3

Two months on, as the country runs out of wood to fuel the funeral pyres, it's COVID that is winning.

0:42.1

So what's gone wrong?

0:43.5

And what does India's experience tell the rest of the world about what is yet to come?

0:48.2

Step into the briefing room and together we'll find out.

0:56.0

It's been a terrible last few days in India.

0:59.0

Here's my briefing room colleague Paul Moss.

1:02.0

It's become almost the soundtrack to life in India these past few weeks,

1:08.0

from Kashmir in the Himalayas to the tropical southern capital

1:12.1

of Chennai and in town, cities and villages all along the 2,000 miles in between, people are in

1:18.4

desperate need of medical help. This was New Delhi, the country's capital, where hospital

1:26.6

facilities are better than in most parts of India.

1:29.6

But even here, ambulances, disgorged patients, only for them to find there were no beds free, no doctors on hand,

1:37.1

no equipment available to give them the treatment they need.

1:42.8

My father is in a very critical condition.

1:45.2

I'm getting no help.

1:46.2

Nobody is responding.

1:47.9

Numbers are not reachable.

...

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