Even as the Indian government at every turn dismissed researchers and research institutions that have said the country’s excess deaths during the pandemic far surpass the official record, it has come up against a challenger it may not find easy to ignore -- the WHO.
The organisation has set the cat amongst the pigeons of the Indian bureaucracy by recording that India’s toll was at least four times higher than what government records show.
The WHO document emphatically claims that the actual Covid fatalities are in line with independent Indian and international researchers.
This conclusion seriously challenges India’s insistence on the integrity of its data reporting and collection mechanism.
To keep up appearances that India controlled the Covid waves effectively, the babus have been either misreporting or outrightly rigging the numbers at their masters’ behest.
That this would also significantly lower the mandatory payout to relatives of Covid victims could be a reason for this criminal fudging of statistics.
Hopefully the actual numbers would be put out in the public domain now for all to see
