This as the rightwing can’t digest the relentless drop in Modi’s global and India ratings, due largely to poor handling of the second Covid wave and the scores of bodies floating down the Ganga, and its body-banks pitted with shallow graves topped with saffron. A photograph of burning funeral pyres fed the anti-Modi narrative, and Modi’s support base eroded and it looked very uphill for Modi to regain lost ground. The Morning Consult tracker said Modi’s overall rating had fallen from 75% mid-February to 63% mid-May, the maximum decline happening in April.

At home, C-Voter found Modi’s performance rating plummet from 65% a year ago to 37% in May 2021. Modi wouldn’t have believed a year ago that his stock would fall to a pandemic by so much. The Congress leapt at the opportunity to bring Modi to tears! Crocodile tears, the media ruled even as the NYT featured a crocodile head on its front-page. Congress leader P Chidambaram declared that the vast majority of Covid-struck Indians had been left to fend for themselves.

That being said, Modi has time to recover; but only if he can vaccinate the vast majority of Indians. Already, there’s an effort to regain lost ground. The majority of Modi’s rightwing base has begun to rally behind him even as positivity rates and Covid death rates have begun to register a downward trend. Also, the Opposition parties cannot walk from the farmer protests even if that means turning the protests into super-spreader events. The three farm laws are potent weapons in the opposition’s arsenal to oust Modi.

Modi realizes he’s down in the doldrums, but he cannot do much so long as the coronavirus stays on course and refuses to die. The situation has eased and cases have fallen in recent days, and people are getting to understand that the only way forward for the besieged Indian is to get vaccinated. However, the vaccine shortage is real, and like somebody said, vaccines are not coffee which you can get hold of just by walking into a café. Vaccines take time to produce. They also cost a pretty penny. Unfortunately, India’s vaccine shortage is self-inflicted. Otherwise, why would India, the “pharmacy for the whole world” and largest producer of vaccines, be in such a fix? Nobody in India planned for so far ahead. The visionaries are all Chinese, Indians are quite happy being short-sighted!

Nonetheless, India will be out of the woods if 70% of its population is vaccinated by year-end. The question is can we do it? The problem is the daily squabbles and the everyday rants. The war is on two fronts for the BJP. One, to ensure that all vaccine needs are met ASAP. Two, to ward off the attacks to unseat Modi. This second could also mean replacing Modi with another more viable acceptable face. For instance Nitin Gadkari, whose birthday the day before saw everybody except Narendra Modi wishing him ‘Happy Birthday.’

Significantly, while Modi is getting rogered internationally and ‘nationally’, he’s not alone in the Covid-19 dock. The other man standing, perhaps wobblingly so, is Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath who will have to fall in line and take his prescribed medicine. A meeting of top BJP leaders in Lucknow earlier this month was said to be a stock-taking of BJP’s prospects in the forthcoming 2022 Uttar Pradesh assembly elections. If by the end of this year the Covid-19 pandemic is not conquered, the BJP will not be able to put up a reasonable fight in the Uttar Pradesh elections. In that case, the once bitten-twice shy Election Commission and Modi Government will have to take a tough decision, whether to hold or postpone the elections. Getting hold of vaccines and vaccinating the large majority of Indians seems to be the only solution for Narendra Modi and BJP.

But even as Modi struggles to find enough vaccines within a fixed span of time, out there in the world, in countries which do not face a vaccine shortage, the problem is to fight the anti-vaxers, ward off attempts to scare people from taking their jabs. For example, the authorities had to double down on a news outlet when it published an article calling for Nuremberg-style trials for researchers who use children for medical experiments, i.e., vaccinate children, which will be the next phase for India and perhaps has already begun in the USA. The article was construed as “violence against vaccine researchers” and the news outlet had to pull it down and tender an apology. (IPA Service