Shekhar Gupta: India calling Mayday, Mayday

Triumphalism, premature declaration of victory meant no one checked if India had enough vaccines, oxygen, remdesivir, bringing us back to a crisis where we need foreign aid after four decades

The timing of the headline of this column on 1 May is purely coincidental. It isn’t meant to be some kind of a play on words either. It is, unfortunately, the best description of the state of distress India is in. It’s calling out to all major nations for assistance, from oxygen to N-95 masks, to oximeters and vaccines. And when these arrive by the giant cargo-plane load, we have central cabinet ministers tweeting in joy. Until a few weeks back, they’d be dismissing any suggestion of the ‘new’ India seeking foreign aid with contempt.

We aren’t scoring a point. We