V OLUME 37 NUMBER 10 MAY09-22, 2020 ISSN 0970-1710 HTTPS://FRONTLINE.THEHINDU.COM COVER STORY Maharashtra: Fighting on two fronts 66 Blame game Gujarat: Sudden spike 68 Tamil Nadu: Clusters Faced with the failure of its lockdown-centric strategy, the Centre of worry 69 blames the States and the people for the rising graph of COVID-19 Kerala: Incoming challenge 71 Delhi: Confusion in capital 73 infection in the country. Grossly inadequate Union health budgets Punjab: Blame game over pilgrims 74 and the long-term failure to build a robust public health infrastruc- Rajasthan: Critical battle 76 ture have compounded the crisis. 4 Bihar: Waking up late 77 Harvesting misery 79 Globally, dissent under attack 82 United States: Blaming China to hide its own follies 86 Dorothy Hamre: Discoverer of coronavirus 88 Will socialism make a comeback? 90 OBITUARY P.W. Anderson: Epochal figure in physics 97 Margaret Burbidge: How a virus evolves in a Star scientist 101 pandemic 9 Fascinated by twinkling In search of a road map 15 light 102 Irrfan Khan: Salaam, Irrfan 104 Migrants made invisible 29 Caste and public health 47 BOOKS 93 Jammu & Kashmir: Meat industry in The caravan waits 34 the doldrums 54 Interview: Judiciary & lockdown: Clueless captain 18 Jayaprakash Muliyil 38 Little hope, less trust 56 Interview: Job offers gone, Proactive high courts 58 K. Srinath Reddy 22 internships now unpaid 42 Lessons from abroad 60 Economy: Dystopian At home but not safe 44 Authoritarian ways of pipe dream 25 The RIL-Facebook tie-up 45 the Delhi Police 62 On the Cover THE STATES At Sabarmati railway station near Ahmedabad, stranded migrants arrive to board a Uttar Pradesh: Anxiety train to their native place, on May 6. Air Surcharge: over arrivals 65 Colombo - Rs.20.00 and COVER DESIGN: T.S. 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In no event can the Owner, Reproduction in whole or in part without written permission is prohibited. Publisher, Printer, Editor, Director/s, Employees of this magazine/ company be held responsible/liable in any manner whatsoever for any e-mail: [email protected] claims and/or damages for advertisements in this magazine. Frontline is not responsible for the content of external Internet sites. M AY 22, 2020 . F RONTLINE 3 COVER STORY BLAME GAME Faced with the failure of its lockdown-centric strategy, the Centre blames the States and the people for the rising graph of COVID-19 infection in the country. Grossly inadequate Union health budgets and the long-term failure to build a robust public health infrastructure have GRAPHICS COURTESY: ISI, BENGALURU FIG.2: CASES during May 1-8. The growth factor in the compounded the crisis. BY R. RAMACHANDRAN period shows that the growth curve is yet to cross the inflection point. level trends. Comparison of these States with States such as Kerala and Telangana is particularly telling. Of course, one must add here that one is taking the data at face value, which may not be the true picture because of State-level disparities in testing rates. The case timelines of some of these problem States are shown in Figure 4a. As can be seen, compared with FIG. 1: A TIMELINE of confirmed COVID-19 cases up to Kerala and Telangana, where the number of cases has May 7 with the y-axis as a log scale. levelled off, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Delhi, Punjab, Tamil Nadu and West Bengal have seen a recent large increase Since May 1, the national-level DT has been slightly in the number of cases. In Figure 4b the increase every above 11 days. Of course, because of highly inadequate day (measured in a certain way to smoothen out testing, this data may also not reflect the true picture. fluctuations) is plotted against the total count on that day Compared with the national figure of 11, Kerala’s DT and tells one how close to or distant from “dropping off” has been showing a steady increase since the last week of the exponential phase a State is. Whereas Kerala and March, and from a value of 5 days then, its current DT is Telangana have deviated substantially from the about 37! Telangana’s DT is around 24 days, which is also reference straight line that indicates exponential growth, praiseworthy. The DTs of the problem States are as PTI the problem States are still close to the straight line, follows: The DT in both Maharashtra and Gujarat, with which indicates that they are still very much in the their steady increase in the number of cases, has been exponential phase and are quite far from dropping off around 9.5 for some days now. From 13 days, Delhi’s DT THE GROWTH OF COVID-19 INFECTIONS IN UNION HEALTH Minister Dr Harsh Vardhan and any time soon. While Maharashtra, Gujarat and Delhi dropped to about 10.5 between May 1 and May 7. India (number of confirmed cases as per government Minister of State (Health) Ashwini Choubey during a have experienced a steady large growth in the number of Punjab’s DT, which was around 16.5 at the end of April, data, to be precise) is yet to “fall off” the exponential videoconference with Health Ministers and officials of cases, in the case of Punjab, Tamil Nadu and West Bengal suddenly dropped to under 1 with the huge increase of growth phase. This can be seen graphically if the timeline Gujarat and Maharashtra, in New Delhi on May 6. a sudden massive spurt in numbers has resulted in their 105 (out of a total of 480) cases in just one day after of number of cases is plotted with the number of cases on case timelines now curving back towards the exponential positive cases were found in a large number of pilgrims a logarithmic scale graph (where, unlike on a linear scale been mostly above 1. This implies that although the reference line after earlier showing signs of dropping off returning from Nanded, Maharashtra. As of May 7, it has graph, unit intervals typically differ by a factor of 10). The growth rate is close to dropping below the exponential from it. inched back to about 5. From a DT of about 11, West graph (Figure 1) will be a straight line if the infection phase, it is still very much in that phase even as the One of the metrics the government uses to depict the Bengal has now dropped to less than 9 days, which spread is continuing to increase exponentially. While the country is into its third consecutive lockdown. effectiveness of the non-pharmaceutical interventions it reflects a spike in the number of cases. According to the curve may seem to depart from the straight line, recent While at the individual level some States have done has enforced, such as lockdowns, restrictions on State government, this is due to greatly ramped-up data suggest that its trend is closer to a straight line than well and succeeded in veering off the exponential phase, movement and physical distancing, is the so-called testing. Tamil Nadu’s DT was around 17 at end of April curving downwards. A proper statistical regression there are, as can be seen from Figure 3 (where both the doubling time (DT). This is the time taken for the but now has dropped to about 5, reportedly because of analysis to the data will show that the best curve that fits increase in the number of cases and the total count are number of infections on a given day to become double the government’s failure to test truck drivers and other the data in this graph is a straight line. plotted on a log scale), still a significant number of States that figure. Equivalently, given the number of total cases workers coming into Tamil Nadu from other States. The Another way of looking at this trend, as discussed in that are in the exponential phase (closer to the reference on any given day, the DT is the number of days prior to government, on the other hand, has maintained that the an earlier article (“Lockdown and after”, Frontline, May straight line), and the growth rates there are a source of that when the number of cases was half that value. It is increase in number is due to increased testing. 8), is the “growth factor”, the ratio of the changes in the concern. These States are Maharashtra, Gujarat, Delhi, easy to understand that a higher DT means that the According to the Union Ministry of Health and number of confirmed cases between two consecutive Tamil Nadu, Punjab and West Bengal, with the last three infection spread is slower and, conversely, a lower DT Family Welfare (MoHFW), 20 districts accounted for 68 days.