I don't think it's surprising to anyone that a country with a massive population, poor infrastructure, and greatly divided haves and have nots, are having a bad time. I'd be amazed if this is even 25% of the actual cases reported.
There are almost certainly multiple factors involved. One thing to keep in mind is that the seasonal nature of coronavirus near the equator is very different from farther north with a double hump at the start and end of summer being the usual. It is possible that whatever people are doing and whatever mutations have occurred that some natural factor that we do not understand is contributing.
2 major festivals, Holi and Kumbh Mela (attended by over 2m people with no social distancing or anything), massive election rallies in multiple states. Poor vaccination drive. A double mutant variant of the virus that seems to be faster spreading. Medical system collapsing, almost everything that could go wrong is going wrong.
Can't the chairs of state start acting like CEOs of their countries rather than like royals who need to fly 200 people just to have a chat? They can talk on zoom, all we need to know is "chairman of india spoke to chairman of uk and the following things changed:"
What makes you think they don‘t? Actual physical visits are to eg finalze deals, when high-bandwidth communication is necessary. And by high-bandwidth I mean body language, spontaneous n-to-n conversations between all participants, etc.
In person conversations are to preserve plausible deniability, presuming they are not being recorded. I am only going to say things I want a transcript of over electronic mediums. CEOs do the same thing, and it is partly why being located in certain dense cities is so valuable.
Especially considering international travel is still banned by law for any non-essential purposes, and I can't see how a meeting that could be trivially done on Zoom would be classified as essential.
When Theresa May visited India in 2016 the conclusion was that Britain was becoming even less relevant to India given that Brexit meant the UK no longer gave India access to EU markets, and because May refused to increase the amount of Indian student visas.* So I'm struggling to see why Johnson would fair any better.
India and UK have essentially the same nominal GDP, while UK probably has ~ 1/20 the population. This despite not seeing none of the violent conflicts of East/SE Asia, either during the great war or after that.
India consciously inherited the draconian colonial system of the past century, with all its inherent builtin cruelties, and has shown neither intent, nor any inclinations of changing this. It clearly serves the elite well to have this setup with a meek and famished population.
Take one simple metric: the literacy remains < 80%. China has near 100%, despite the complexity of the writing system. India thinks the issue is with its native languages (that its people actually understand) and now plans to 'leap-frog' China by teaching people everything in English.
India is set to create an entire generation of people who are skilled neither in their mother tongues, nor in the "progressive foreign language"; neither are they civilized in Indian traditions, nor in Western ones. A country with such mental handicap will go more in the way of sub-saharan Africa with all its meaningless violence.
Once the candles of the old civilization are finally extinguished, I expect a lot more violence. If anything India will end up as another basket case, and require a lot more humanitarian aid.
I would hardly consider Britain a failed state compared to the utter poverty, religious violence, and sexual inequality tens of millions face daily there.
[+] [-] tim333|5 years ago|reply
I'm not sure how it's gone from declining in Jan to super exponential in Mar/April?
[+] [-] GVIrish|5 years ago|reply
There's not a lot of data yet on that variant's transmissibility and lethality but it has already been detected in the UK.
Thus far it doesn't seem to be as dangerous as the Brazilian P1 variant, but could be trouble just the same.
[+] [-] overcast|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] m0llusk|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cblconfederate|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bongoman37|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cblconfederate|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] axiosgunnar|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lotsofpulp|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Nextgrid|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nanna|5 years ago|reply
* https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-37950198
[+] [-] xmdx|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jimmyed|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] teoru23434|5 years ago|reply
India consciously inherited the draconian colonial system of the past century, with all its inherent builtin cruelties, and has shown neither intent, nor any inclinations of changing this. It clearly serves the elite well to have this setup with a meek and famished population.
Take one simple metric: the literacy remains < 80%. China has near 100%, despite the complexity of the writing system. India thinks the issue is with its native languages (that its people actually understand) and now plans to 'leap-frog' China by teaching people everything in English.
India is set to create an entire generation of people who are skilled neither in their mother tongues, nor in the "progressive foreign language"; neither are they civilized in Indian traditions, nor in Western ones. A country with such mental handicap will go more in the way of sub-saharan Africa with all its meaningless violence.
Once the candles of the old civilization are finally extinguished, I expect a lot more violence. If anything India will end up as another basket case, and require a lot more humanitarian aid.
[+] [-] neilsense|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] MeinBlutIstBlau|5 years ago|reply