Public confidence in the government’s handling of the Covid crisis has plummeted since February, finds polling agency YouGov
Clarion India
NEW DELHI — The devastating second wave of Covid-19 and the government’s utter failure to come to the rescue of the suffering masses appear to have sharply dented Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s popularity. A recent survey shows that his approval ratings have fallen to a new low.
Modi’s overall ratings this week stand at 63%, says a Reuters report quoting polling agency YouGov. This is the lowest since US firm Morning Consult <https://morningconsult.com/form/global-leader-approval/> began tracking his popularity in August 2019. The big decline happened in April when his net approval dropped 22 points.
Morning Consult is a global, privately held data intelligence company established in 2014.
The latest survey by polling agency YouGov, a British Internet-based firm, showed that among urban Indians public confidence in the government’s handling of the ongoing health crisis has plummeted since February when the second wave began.
Only 59% of respondents at the end of April believed the government was handling the crisis ‘very’ or ‘somewhat’ well, down from 89% a year earlier during the first wave, it showed.
That sharp fall came as the pandemic appeared to be overwhelming large urban centres such as Delhi, where hospitals ran out of beds and life-saving oxygen and people died in parking lots, gasping for breath.
Bodies piled up in morgues and crematoriums and anger grew on social media over the suffering and perceived lack of government support.
The situation has since eased in Delhi and Mumbai as cases have fallen but the virus has penetrated deep into India’s vast hinterland where public health facilities are weaker.
“The people of India — or at least the vast majority — have… come to the conclusion that they have to rely only on themselves, and their families and friends, to protect their lives,” Reuters quoted Congress leader and former Union minister P. Chidambaram, as saying.
“In the battle against Covid-19, the state, especially the central government, has withered away,” he said.
The Central government has said it is doing its best to tackle the “coronavirus storm”, calling it a once-in-a-century crisis.
