'In an interview that could cause considerable apprehension and even possibly fear, the director of the Washington-based Center for Disease Dynamics, Economics and Policy and lecturer at Princeton University Ramanan Laxminarayan has said that India could be the next coronavirus hotspot. Using the United States estimates for itself that 20%-60% of the population could be infected, Dr Laxminarayan said that means in the worst case scenario, 60% of the Indian population could be infected – which is some 700 or 800 million people.
'Raising questions of surveillance and alleged violation of user privacy guidelines mandated by the Supreme Court, the government has been seeking call data records (CDRs) of all mobile subscribers across several pockets of the country for specific days over the past few months. This unusual request has been routed to telecom operators through the local units of the Department of Telecommunications (DoT). Records have been sought for consumers in the circles of Delhi, Andhra Pradesh, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu & Kashmir, Kerala, Odisha, Madhya Pradesh and Punjab...'
'The senior bureaucrat tasked with laying the foundations for the Indian government’s controversial Social Registry warned that a centralised, cross-linked database of this scale could compromise the privacy and security of over a billion Indians, but his warnings were ignored, documents reviewed by HuffPost India establish... “I saw India was emerging as a police state. Strong police state. And my belief is very simple that for any country to develop, it should allow more freedom to the household sector and the businesses and impose less control,” Kumar said.
'The Narendra Modi government has missed several targets it had set for 2019 to tackle tuberculosis (TB). According to a reply given by Minister of State, Health and Family Welfare, Ashwini Kumar Choubey, in Rajya Sabha Tuesday, India has managed to achieve only 6.8 lakh notifications last year — not even half of the set target — from the private sector. The government had set a target of receiving 18 lakh notifications in 2019. The notifications from the private sector are important as around 50 per cent of patients with TB are diagnosed and treated in the private sector.
'The State-level committees meant to monitor the implementation of the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989 of 25 States and Union Territories had not met even once in three years — 2016, 2017 and 2018, according to information provided by the Union Social Justice and Empowerment Ministry to Parliament on Tuesday...'
'The Narendra Modi government is in the final stages of creating an all-encompassing, auto-updating, searchable database to track every aspect of the lives of each of India’s over 1.2 billion residents, previously undisclosed government documents reviewed by HuffPost India establish. If the plans of Modi’s bureaucrats and advisors are realised, this system will automatically track when a citizen moves between cities, changes jobs, buys new property, when a member of a family is born, dies or gets married and moves to their spouse’s home.
'As the world grapples with the coronavirus, people in most countries are turning to their governments and public healthcare systems to battle the pandemic. In India, however, the situation is different. With a public healthcare system that is in a shambles, many Indians are looking with suspicion at the state’s efforts to battle the Covid-19 disease, creating complications for health authorities to grapple with. This was illustrated by the case of the Agra woman who hit the headlines last week after media reports falsely reported that she had fled quarantine.
'On 15 March, the Indian Council of Medical Research convened a meeting with national health experts about the rising cases of COVID-19 in the country, and the way forward for the healthcare system to address the growing crisis. “I know for a fact that India does not have testing kits,” a public-health expert who attended the meeting told me, on the condition of anonymity.
'Going against their own advice, Karnataka ruling party BJP's top leaders took part in a massive gathering for BJP leader Mahantesh Kavatagimath's daughter's wedding. The wedding took place on Sunday in Shagun gardens in the Udyambagh industrial area in Belagavi district. Among the eminent guests at the wedding were Karnataka Chief Minister BS Yediyurappa and Home Minister Basavaraj Bommai... The wedding was held in an open lawn under a canopy. The Karnataka MLC's daughter's wedding saw close to 2000 people, reports suggest. Visuals show people thronging at the wedding.
'India must rapidly scale up testing of the novel coronavirus as it seeks to contain damage from the deadly outbreak, with one expert concerned that cases could double every two to three days in the densely populated country. With a population of 1.3 billion, India has so far reported 81 cases though that number has more than doubled in a week. The country also confirmed its first virus-related casualty on Thursday -- a 76-year-old man.
