Today, the image of “India shining” — a publicity slogan the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) tried so hard to promote in 2004 when it was first elected — is in tatters as news outlets around the world and social media carry images of Indians dying of Covid-19 in the streets as hospitals have run out of beds and oxygen and have had to turn people away. And then there are the gruesome images of mass cremations in parking lots and on sidewalks.
India’s second wave of the pandemic has once again revived images of a country of disease and death. With its health care system collapsing…
