From the op-ed:
Of another existential threat, Bob Dylan accusingly asked, “How many deaths will it take till we know that too many people have died?” This Covid pandemic in India has seen a curious but no less tragic inversion of that sentiment: Only a sense that too many died in the second wave has really galvanised efforts to find out the true number of deaths.
The official Covid death count as of end-June 2021 is 4,000,000. The reality is, of course, catastrophically worse. Unlike in other countries, authoritative excess death estimates based on official data have not been available because government recording of deaths, especially at the Centre, has been lagging. As a result, thus far, and with some exceptions, attempts to capture the sombre reality have been inadequate.
