Mamata Banerjee

Narendra Modi has surely lost his cool after 48% of the voters of Bengal rejected him quite decisively in the recent state elections by sinking their fierce political differences. Then followed the first real thrashing from all sections that Modi received in his seven years as prime minister for his disastrous handling of the Covid-19 pandemic.

It is a pity that after managing to control the rates of infection, recovery and mortality from the coronavirus reasonably better than five other comparable metropolises, Calcutta now appears determined to tease its fate during Durga Puja. When the coronavirus appeared in tiny numbers, knee-jerk, unplanned, nationwide lockdowns were clamped down with a lot of drama, with politics and image-building taking precedence. The social media was inundated with hate-filled messages targeting West Bengal’s special incompetence in combating the pandemic, ignoring the fact that most other states were floundering as well.