Given the severe shortage of oxygen, hospitals across the country are turning away patients afflicted with the virus; many are dying in their homes. Ambulance sirens blare through the night, reminding us of the colossal tragedy unfolding across the country.
India’s poor and the middle class have been left alone–with no access to medical facilities. Hundreds of thousands of people in rural India are dying like flies. India’s callous and short-sighted response to COVID is captured at the cremation grounds that are now overwhelmed. The prime minister’s handling of the crisis can only be described as disastrous.
In this unmitigated disaster, India’s Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar is willingly sacrificing his reputation–as a competent diplomat–in the service of his political master. Worse, he is using the Ministry of External Affairs and India’s diplomatic corps to justify the Prime Minister’s inept mis-governance and to ensure Modi’s image as a strong leader remains unaltered.
It is also evident that this annus horribilis, in the name of countering a so-called “one-sided narrative,” three fundamental principles on which foreign policy rests–pragmatism, realism and national interest–have also been sacrificed at the altar. India’s diplomatic missions, instead of communicating in a meticulous, strategic and purposeful direction, are recklessly indulging in a dangerous, denialist rhetoric to buoy Modi’s international image and the party’s domestic standing. The poorly drafted rejoinder, sent on a shoddy letterhead, to The Australian, is a classic example of how the MEA is faltering in responding to the COVID situation in India.
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