During the Corona epidemic, Government of India has made it known that the total number of deaths in the country were around 500,000.
Many independent organizations, including media outfits did a detailed analysis of death records over the period 2019-2020 (before Corona) and then 2020-2021 and 2021-2022 and have arrived at massive under reporting of deaths. In some states there is a missing death count of up to 100,000.
Now World Health Organization has also done a statistical model and accused the government of lying about the number of deaths. According to WHO estimates around 4,700,000 Indian died of Corona infection, a figure that is around ten times the official figure.
Independent research seems to validate the WHO claim. But Government of India has called into question the methodology of WHO and has debunked the figure.
This seems to be a trend with the current Indian Government. Any international assessment which they don’t agree to is discredited and the news suppressed.
The images of bodies being disposed in temporary funeral places in Delhi, UP and other places continue to haunt us.
Also, the fact that more than 80,000 people applied for state compensation in Gujarat itself where the official government death figure was just under 13,000 speaks volumes about the data mismatch between actual deaths and recorded deaths.