ON 25 DECEMBER 2020, the ministry of science and technology set up INSACOG, a pan-India network of laboratories to monitor genomic variations of SARS-CoV-2. The government had identified ten advanced laboratories to serve as “regional hubs” for genome sequencing—to keep an eye on the strains of the coronavirus circulating in India. Dr Shahid Jameel, India’s leading virologist, was appointed as chair of this consortium of laboratories.
“By that time, we had very little idea of what was circulating in India, how it was mutating,” a scientist involved with the INSACOG labs told me.
A sophisticated channel of communication was laid out: samples would come from state health departments to the National Centre for Disease Control in Delhi. The NCDC would forward the samples to the regional labs. Each lab was assigned certain states to cover. The samples would be sequenced, and the information generated would be uploaded to a portal accessible to all INSACOG labs and updated weekly. The reports would go back to the NCDC, and from there to state health departments, informing them what had been found in the samples they sent.
“Essentially, this was the information pipeline,” the INSACOG scientist said. “It had never been done before. And it was working reasonably well.” Scientists spent between four and six weeks setting up the structure. “But the government insisted that the flow in and flow out—especially the flow out—of information go through health ministry.” The scientists found this odd because they were working for the department of biotechnology, or DBT, which falls under the ministry of science and technology, not the health ministry.
Just as the INSACOG labs were being set up, doctors at Pune’s BJ Medical College sent in a sample of a new coronavirus variant: B.1.617, a mutant first identified in California. This was the precursor to the Delta variant. Soon, INSACOG labs across India were reporting B.1.617, as well as three separate sub-lineages—variants of the variant. It took the labs a few weeks to conduct genome sequencing. “In February, we sent a report to NCDC, to be forwarded to the government, where we said that this diversification of lineage should be a matter of grave concern,” the INSA-COG scientist told me.
“Did you use the words ‘grave concern’ in your report?” I asked them.
“Absolutely.”
“What happened next?”
“The government sat on that report for two weeks.” Meanwhile, many INSACOG scientists “were getting very frustrated with this delay.”
By March 2021, the INSACOG report should have triggered a series of measures, none of which happened. As per the government’s information pipeline, the report should have made its way to the NCDC, from where it would have been sent to the states and also the health ministry. From there, it would have made its way upwards to Rajiv Gauba, the cabinet secretary—India’s most senior civil servant, who reports directly to Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The scientists wanted the prime minister’s office to know that the coming plague was moving fast. They were asking for major restrictions at a time when the Modi administration was actively encouraging millions of Indians to gather for election rallies and religious festivals.
This report would go on to become an ugly flashpoint, one in which the rigid ideas of a theocratic government clashed with mounting scientific evidence and drowned out the science. It would also end with India’s top virologist, Jameel, resigning from his position as the chairperson of INSA-COG in May 2021, leaving the pandemic response in the hands of a cardiologist and a paediatrician.
India’s deadly second wave had begun.
ON 30 JANUARY 2020, India reported its first case of COVID-19; thus began a degradation of Indian medicine unparalleled in the country’s independent history. It started with three cases reported in Kerala and never really stopped. The story of India’s scientific debasement is also a story of the rise in state-sponsored occult thinking. Despite the country’s considerable advantages—immense resources, scientific knowledge, unmatched experience in dealing with infectious diseases, deep logistical expertise in running mass vaccination campaigns and the world’s largest pharmaceutical industry—the Modi government squandered every possible opportunity to control the pandemic. In a country with too many people and as many gods, the will of one man reigned supreme as Indians died without recourse or recompense.
In the first half of 2020, the coronavirus infected 10 million people around the world and killed about half a million. Few places were hit as severely by the pandemic as India, home to a sixth of the world’s population and a country uniquely incapable of social distancing. By December 2021, close to half a million Indians were claimed by the virus. Even this is a conservative estimate. The actual toll, undoubtedly higher, is unknown, because the Modi government, characteristically, failed to keep an accurate count of its dead.
In February 2020, when the rest of us were wiping doorknobs, disinfecting vegetables and relearning to wash our hands, the responsibility for India’s pandemic response fell on organisations plagued by internal squabbling. These included the health ministry, the science ministry, the Indian Council for Medical Research, NITI Aayog and—the most important but least empowered—the NCDC.
“Everybody was claiming turf,” an infectious disease specialist working with the government told me. “NCDC used to put those weekly maps of outbreaks, all of that stopped.” The department of biotechnology and ICMR “both think they do vaccines. Between ICMR and NCDC, they both think they do disease surveillance. When it comes to clinical research, ICMR doesn’t want anyone else to touch it with a barge pole.” Once the pandemic took hold, the turf wars only intensified. The petty quarrels would shorten many lives.
Science cannot be separated from the human beings trusted with implementing it. Many of these organisations were headed by men who ended up running them like fiefdoms. At the heart of the response were four individuals: the former union health minister, Dr Harsh Vardhan, an ENT specialist by training; the prime minister’s principal scientific advisor, Krishnaswamy VijayRaghavan, an expert in neurogenetics; the head of the ICMR, Dr Balram Bhargava, a cardiologist; and Dr Vinod Kumar Paul, a paediatrician who headed health policy for NITI Aayog, the government’s think tank. These men allowed India’s scientific institutions to turn into halfway houses where the occult and the esoteric were blended with science and socio-political agendas.
I spent weeks trying to figure out who reports to whom, unsuccessfully. From all accounts, India took a series of odd policy decisions that left it lead-footed when it needed to be prompt and responsive, and impetuous when it needed to be careful. The government machinery responsible for the pandemic response grew like a honeycomb, with each ministry, committee, department and state adding addendums, until it became a chaotic, lopsided mess that even the most knowledgeable among the scientists could not make sense of.
“If you look at these committees, there is very little representation of social sciences, economists, medical anthropologists, et cetera,” a professor
