Published in the Florida Times Union, May 9, 2021.

by Parvez Ahmed

About a year ago, I received the devastating news about my Mom’s terminal cancer. As she took her last breaths, I could not visit her in Kolkata, India. The first phase of the COVID-19 pandemic was underway. Global travel had come to a virtual standstill and India, like the rest of the world, was in the midst of lockdowns and quarantines. A year later, while the pandemic here at home is beginning to wane, in India it has metastasized into a carnage. The US State Department has urged Americans to not travel to India and a travel ban from India has now been instituted for non-US citizens. Once again, I am forced to cancel my summer travel plans to visit family in India.

Almost every Indian American I talk to knows someone, either a member of their extended family or someone from their circle of friends, who have been personally impacted by this new wave in India. The 7-day average of daily COVID-19 cases is over 400,000, not only the highest in the world today but also a number not seen anywhere in the past year. The 7-day daily average of deaths is over 3,000. As alarming as these numbers are, experts on the ground contend that the official daily new cases and deaths in India are a severe undercount.

In one of many examples, a crematorium in the capital New Delhi that receive 10 bodies a day during normal times, is now receiving over 100. Graveyards are running out of space too. If that is not dystopian enough, consider the daily “normal” scene of patients entering hospitals with their own oxygen cylinders in tow. Family members pumping someone’s chest as they gasp for air in a car parked outside the hospital as a scramble for bed ensues are not scenes from a M. Night Shyamalan movie.  As patients gasp for air, Indian social media is replete with people pleading for hospital beds or oxygen cylinders.

How did things turn so grave? The tale should be familiar to most Americans. It starts with a national leader in denial and engaging in wishful thinking. Recall on February 26, 2020, then US President Donald Trump boasting, “You have 15 people, and the 15 within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero.” Almost a year later, on January 22, 2021, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi boasted that atmanirbhar Bharat (a self-reliant India) has beaten back the pandemic. India’s ruling political party, Modi’s BJP, hailed the “visionary leadership of Prime Minister Modi” that has made India “victorious nation in the fight against COVID.”

This new wave in India was partly driven by a more transmissible variant but mostly due to Modi government’s negligence. Not only did Modi, much like Trump, engage in large political rallies during a pandemic, he also pandered to the religious establishment by allowing a major Hindu festival, which attracts millions, to go forward. With mask wearing nary in sight, the results were predictable. Cases exploded and the Indian health system collapsed. The Prime Minister who was prematurely boasting of a self-reliant India is now receiving generous donations from many countries, with the United States being a major benefactor. The Biden administration, rightfully understanding that the pandemic cannot be controlled if a major nation like India is on fire, is sending vaccines, large-scale oxygen generation units and N95 masks.

The generosity of the American people will undoubtedly be appreciated by my family, friends and untold millions. However, the challenge in India remains one of sane governance. Modi and his allies seem more worried about critical social media posts and editorials in foreign newspapers than about the plight of people gasping for air. Just as Trump made states fight for COVID-19 test kits, Modi has left the states in India to fend for themselves in securing supplies of vaccines. Even as a practicing physician, my father cannot secure a vaccine for himself much less his family. Following threats from “powerful people” the CEO of Serum Institute, India’s leading vaccine manufacturer, has fled to London.

Growing up in India, I have lived through many social traumas. But through it all, I have always found my family and friends resilient even in the face of overwhelming odds. But now I sense resignation and a foreboding of disaster. They feel powerless in the face of this incalculable tragedy. Dealing with this fatalism has only made matters worse for the Indian diaspora in America.

Parvez Ahmed was born in India and is professor of finance and director of diversity and inclusion at the Coggin College of Business, University of North Florida.

Is South Asia becoming a beacon for democracy? On the heels of an inspiring voter turnout in Afghanistan, voters in India are mobilizing in one of the most impressive exercises in universal adult franchise. Just a few months earlier, Pakistan had its first peaceful democratic transition in power. Bangladesh, surprisingly, was an outlier when the ruling party swept back into power via a non-election election. A boycott by the opposition led to a majority of the ruling party members being elected unopposed. Despite this, the general trend in South Asia is positive, with India once again leading the way.

In India, this year, an estimated 814.5 million people are eligible to vote. This is up from 713 million voters in 2009, representing an impressive 14 percent increase, with the largest increase in voter registrations coming from younger Indians. Elections will be held in 28 Indian states and 7 union territories. Two national political parties are in contention — the Indian National Congress (INC), established in 1885 and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), established in 1980. There are well over 50 regional or state political parties, some of them splinter groups from the national parties, and others independently organized. However, it is the regional parties that will collectively decide the fate of the next Indian government as the neither of the national parties will win the majority of the seats being contested. Indian politics is increasingly Balkanized and a national election is really an amalgamation of many regional elections. Since 1989, no single political party has mustered a clear majority in any national election.

In its 16th general election, Indian voters will elect 543 out of the 545 seats of the lower house of parliament, called the Lok Sabha or People’s House. National elections take place once every five years unless the ruling party calls for an early vote or loses the confidence of a majority of its members. The Lok Sabha will select the prime minister, who is the head of government.

The Indian Election Commission, a constitutional body independent of the government, conducts the election. The campaign season mercifully lasts only eight weeks, although voting in some states can begin as early as two weeks after the official opening of the campaign season. Ballots are cast electronically over six weeks, from April 7 to May 12 this year, in nine phases. In the three phases completed thus far, voter turnout has been higher than the expected 60 percent. Results will not be announced until all regions have completed voting.

The Election Commission is required to have a polling place within 1.2 miles of every voter. To fulfill this mandate requires 10 million polling officials and security personnel in 930,000 polling stations. Election day in each region is a paid holiday for all non-essential workers. Even part-time workers are granted paid leave fulfilling an Election Commission mandate that every eligible voter shall be given the proper means to fulfill their right.

Indian democracy faces some of the same challenges that our American democracy faces, from the corrosive influence of money to the problem of incumbency. However, unlike the US, 75 percent of the source of funds to Indian political parties is unknown, according to the Association of Democratic Reform. Of the sources that are known, 87 percent of the funding comes from the corporate sector or business houses. In India where the average per capita income is a shade over Rs. 50,000 ($830), the largest donors lavished money on the political parties to the tune of several million dollars. Industrialist Aditya Birla’s group gave Rs. 360 million to INC and Rs. 260 million to its rival BJP.

The Association of Democratic Reform also reports that the average candidate owned Rs. 50 million worth in assets. In the last Lok Sabha, the average wealth of a member of parliament was Rs. 100 million. The average Indian will have to live longer than Noah to achieve these levels of wealth gains. More alarmingly, 30 percent of the candidates have a criminal case against them. India’s National Election Watch announced that of the 162 parliamentarians involved in 306 criminal cases, 76 are charged with serious crimes like murder, attempted murder and kidnapping.

The nationalist and Hindu fundamentalist BJP party is likely to muster enough seats to form a coalition government with Narendra Modi as the Prime Minister. Indians are poised to give the religious right yet another chance mainly because the secularist INC has failed to deliver on their promise of equitable economic growth and are now mired in many corruption scandals. After growing at 8 percent a year, the Indian economy has slowed down to a 5 percent rate of growth. Narendra Modi, who is head of the Indian state of Gujarat, has delivered above average economic growth for his state and projects to replicate this success all across India. His slogan toilets before temple have given hope to many that he will keep his fundamentalist roots subservient to his pro-business credentials.

Modi has a checkered past. He failed to stop mob violence against the Muslim minority in his state that lead to the death of over a thousand people with many more displaced. This is the primary reason Modi has been denied entry into the United States for nearly a decade now. About 16,000 Muslims displaced in the communal riots of 2002 still remain in relief colonies where they are denied even the most basic amenities. While Modi boasts of his state’s impressive economic growth he blames “vegetarianism and figure-conscious Gujarati girls” as the reason his state ranks high on malnutrition. Nearly half the children below the age of five suffer from malnutrition and nearly 70 percent children in Modi’s ‘Shining Gujarat’ suffer from anemia.

Modi’s religious fundamentalist roots are worrisome for women in India, who are increasingly the target of male chauvinism often emanating for religious fundamentalists. According to Human Rights Watch, women during the communal riots of 2002 Gujarat were stripped, gang-raped, then burned or hacked to death. Indian women are worried that violence against women will not receive the priority it should in the wake of several high profile rape cases. In Gujarat there are 918 women for every 1000 men. This is below the national average of 940, perhaps suggesting a high level of female infanticide in Gujarat.

Indians are caught between a rock and hard place. On one hand they desperately want the government to re-ignite India’s economic growth. And yet the party with the most pro-business credential is also cloaked in anti-modern social views that will further disadvantage India’s struggling minorities and women. Modi’s slogan, toilets before temples, sounds good but the fact that temples come ahead of improving social cohesion, should make Indians nervous. We have seen plenty of examples around the world where religious fundamentalists capitalized on the economic failure of the secularists but once in power they drifted rightward leaving the country more divided. Modi may turn around India’s economic performance but at what cost to the poor, the minority and the disenfranchised, remains a question and concern.