'Jai Shri Ram' or 'Jai Siya Ram'?
Why the Korean-sounding hashtag #Heng_pung_lee is trending
1 by 9: ‘History will fudge me better’
Never mind Amit Shah’s bizarre and brazen claim that the world was seeing India’s “successful battle” against #coronavirus when it was touching the one-million mark. Questions over India’s COVID data have been around since the middle of April.
On April 15, a BBC report quoted doctors saying they were “underreporting numbers, they were under-testing”. On April 21, when India officially claimed 18,000 cases, German researchers said they figured it was close to 136,000.
On April 24, a Reuters report showed that Ahmedabad reported 67% fewer deaths in March 2020 compared to March 2019. A crematorium in Uttar Pradesh which used to cremate 30 bodies a day, had recorded only 43 deaths in 32 days since March 22.
On May 28, the Hindi daily Dainik Bhaskar called it “Death ki Data Fixing”.
All those surmises have been revived with a flurry of reports over the weekend, all making the same point that India’s numbers were looking illogically good.
A BBC reality check says with cases doubling every 20 days, India is now a global hotspot. India has scaled up its testing and has so far conducted 10.3 million tests but it is a drop in front of other countries.
With over 26,000 deaths from 10 lakh cases (a rate of 2.6%, slightly lower than the United States rate of 3.6%), The Washington Post reports “there are numerous signs that COVID-19 deaths are being missed or misreported”.
But the most damaging claim comes from Priyanka Pulla reporting in the respected British Medical Journal that “stories about unreported deaths are rising across the country”.
Karnataka health minister B. Sreeramulu was quoted as saying helplessly that “only God can save us” but it appears as if even God has too much on his hands and not enough time to spare even for the devout.
2 by 9: Zoom barabar
Rahul Gandhi’s second online class is out, but does it really add up to anything, aside from achieving the justifiable objective of bypassing legacy media which has been tamed, tutored and threatened to not to give the Opposition much play?
Gandhi’s drum beaters are naturally cock-a-hoop: nearly 10 lakh views, over 15,000 retweets and comments, and 45,000 “likes”, but do these things make any sense these days when everything online is a purchaseable commodity?
Preceding the 2019 elections, too, Rahul Gandhi’s social media traction soared, but to what end? Is he merely touching base after the forced holiday?
Then again, looking at BJP parade its president J.P. Nadda and external affairs minister S. Jaishankar in panic, the Congress gambit may be paying off. With even erstwhile cheerleaders seeing merit in Gandhi’s videos, maybe.
Just maybe.
3 by 9: Temple run
Everything follows a script in the stenographic age, even the reporting of the news of the prime minister being invited by the Shri Ram Janmabhoomi Teerth Kshetra Trust to lay the foundation stone on August 5.
Every report in Hindi media makes it a point to mention the fact that August 5, the date chosen by the PM, marks the first anniversary of the abrogation of Article 370 in Jammu & Kashmir, as if the two issues are connected.
There are two good out-of-the-box interventions, one from Sanket Upadhyay, an NDTV anchor born in Faizabad, who says the Trust should etch the words “Jai Siya Ram” or “Shri Sita Ram” to give primacy to Sita before the Lord’s.
The other comes from Ashok Swain, a “Professor of Peace and Conflict Research, Uppsala University, Sweden”, often in the crosshairs of the sangh parivar, who asks why PM, and not President Ram Nath Kovind, is doing the honours.
4 by 5: North by northwest
Four hours of showers in Delhi on Sunday, with the Minto Road bridge flooded, got North Indian media folk all excited but the floods in Assam where over 100 people have died, is still to interest a media punning on Pilot headlines.
This is how Assam looks from behind a windscreen.
5 by 9: Asian tigers
Still having delusions about what India can do from here on?
Mint has a couple of sobering graphics today, showing how India has fared compared to South Korea and China after starting off at more or less the same level and the uphill ride that lies ahead.
In 1961, India’s per capita income was $85.4 (approximately Rs 6,000 in today’s currency); South Korea was $93.8 (Rs 6,500). Today, India’s per capita income is at $2,104 (Rs 1.5 lakh); Korea’s is at $31,762 (Rs 22 lakh).
Chin’a GDP in 1990 was nearly the same as India’s; it’s now gone past the US.
6 by 9: Panther ‘panchali’
For all his pedigree, promise and media savvy, Saad bin Jung didn’t quite manage to come out of the shadow of his uncle Mansur Ali Khan Pataudi. But the Hyderabadi batsman’s son Shaaz Jung is taming real tigers and going places, thank you.
The photographer and resort owner’s labour of love, a series on black panthers of Kabini, is wowing editors in Bangalore and anchors in Delhi, to all of whom Jung Junior makes the same promise: “I’d love to take you on safari someday!”
7 by 9: Tired ‘saadam’
The Tamil “actor activist lawyer writer quizzer dancer foodie travelholic” Kasturi Shankar had her 29 seconds of fame when she ate through Arnab Goswami’s rant.
Saluted for her “confidence level”, the Thiruda Thiruda star blithely played down her insouciance: “He wasnt gonna let me talk anyways, so I left and grabbed lunch. but forgot to sign off skype.” (sic)
That’s her excuse, OK, but what’s former NDTV staffer and “columnist, blogger, musician” Abhigyan Prakash’s?
8 by 9: Thumka lagake
How would you like to be remembered? The lyricist, writer and poet Manoj Muntashir shows how they do grief in parts unknown.
And, finally
Boing Boing, the directory of all things wonderful, speaks for every child in the world.
Today I learned
Of the Kannada hashtag #Heng_pung_lee, exposing a “Mouth ka Saudagar”.
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