-The Hindu In the U.S., India and Brazil, messianic populism, polarisation and insularity have made the pandemic that much worse A year and counting into the greatest health crisis the world has faced in over a century we can identify one overwhelming factor that separates the countries that have done relatively well from those that have been complete disasters:Autocrcy elected autocrats. By any measure the most dismal performers in the democratic world...

-The Indian Express They will not only help capture the true scale of the tragedy, but will also help in planning better for the next waves of the pandemic. In his memoirs, the writer Suryakant Tripathi (1896-1961), better known as Nirala, described the river Ganga as “swollen with dead bodies” when the deadly second wave of the influenza pandemic struck India in 1918. The pandemic was a deeply traumatic experience for him,...

-Newslaundry.com 'What positivity do we look for in people's suffering?' “A 29-year-old man died in the hospital while his wailing wife and children waited outside,” Ronak Shah, a reporter for the Gujarati daily Sandesh said, recalling a tragedy he witnessed on April 12. “The three-year-old daughter kept saying, ‘My father is coming soon and we are here to take him home. I offered her a biscuit to eat, she did not take...

-NDTV.com The Election Commission said it is aggrieved with media report of the Madras High Court's oral observations that it is "singularly responsible for the situation prevalent today" and that the Election Commission should face murder charges. New Delhi: The Election Commission today requested the Madras High Court to restrain the media from reporting on oral observations, days after the court's sharp remarks on "murder charges" on officials of the election body...

-The Indian Express In the last 10 days, from April 18 to April 27, as many as 3,049 died of Covid. And an almost equal number, 3909, died suspected to have had Covid. The harrowing images playing out from cities and towns across the country show mourners lined up outside crematoriums, rows of funeral pyres burning with hardly a break, last-rites arrangements being hurriedly scrambled for the rising number of dead. In the...