Newslaundry Podcast

In this episode of NL Hafta, Newslaundry’s Abhinandan Sekhri, Raman Kirpal, Manisha Pande, and Mehraj D Lone are joined by Anand Vardhan and Shaoib Daniyal, associate editor at Scroll.Abhinandan asks Shoaib about the situation in West Bengal, regarding people’s distrust for the number of cases released by the government and the committee formed by Mamata Banerjee to tackle Covid-19. Shoiab says it isn’t clear what powers the committee will have and for now, we can assume it’s a “PR move” to “grab headlines”. Mehraj says the world over, countries use different methodologies to report deaths. What’s different here, he says, is India isn’t reporting infections in the first place. “And that’s where the problems begin.” Manisha says the south Indian states have been “great at giving out data”. About Bihar, Anand says the infection rate is “as low as one percent”, mostly from people who have returned from Gulf countries. He adds that Bihar has received thousands of testing kits, and the pace will pick up soon.Abhin