Raj Patel in the Boston Review:
When Shashank Yadav took to Twitter to plead for oxygen to save his dying grandfather last month, the Indian government swept into action. They arrested Yadav and charged him under section 269 of the Indian Penal Code for acting “with intent to cause, or which is likely to cause, fear or alarm to the public.” Although the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government has yet to take action to tackle the horrors of the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in India, the administration has been exceptionally diligent in managing the circulation of information regarding politics and the pandemic. Such competence has been long in the making. In a 2002 interview, after he had overseen brutal pogroms against Muslims in Gujarat where he was then Chief Minister, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said that his only regret was not better managing the media. When #ResignModi trended on Facebook, where Prime Minister Modi has 47 million followers, posts containing the hashtag were blocked.
Since then, the horrors of the Indian healthcare system have been too obvious to censor.
More here.