Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Saturday said in an interview with PTI that the entire world is shaken by the severity of the Covid-19 pandemic in India and accused the government of ignoring all early warnings. Excerpts follow:

The second wave of coronavirus has hit India hard. We see people gasping for medical aid, medicines, oxygen. How do you see the situation and the response of the government?

It breaks my heart every single day to wake up to the absolute devastation around us…. There are never-ending queues everywhere…. There is a fatal shortage of every single item we need to tackle Covid-19….

India is now the world’s coronavirus epicentre. The entire world is shaken by what they are seeing in India.

None of this should have happened. There were multiple early warning signs. Forget the signs, scientists clearly warned the government this would happen…. We could and should have been much better prepared. And now, where is the government in this crisis? It is completely missing in action.

Did the government falter in assessing the Covid situation? Who is at fault?

Absolutely. The Prime Minister is at fault. He runs a highly centralised and personalised government machinery….

The fact is that this government completely failed to understand or to tackle the Covid-19 pandemic — right from the very beginning…. Since the very start of this pandemic back in 2020, I kept trying to warn the government about the disaster ahead…. It’s not just me — anyone who tried to sound the alarm, the state callously and thoughtlessly ignored.

Modi government let this virus enter India through our airports in February and March of 2020. And then it panicked and without consultation or thought imposed the world’s harshest lockdown.

Migrant workers were left to fend for themselves and an unprecedented exodus began from the cities. The poorest of the poor were forced to walk hundreds of kilometres home with no support, no aid.

In his sheer ignorance, the Prime Minister said he would defeat the virus in 21 days, akin to the battle of Mahabharata!

Modi government is plainly arrogant… declaring victory against the virus is absolute insanity and demonstrates a complete misunderstanding of the nature of what this virus is. The only way to fight corona is with humility and by realising that you are faced with a relentless opponent, who can adapt and is very resilient.

The PM had an entire year to better prepare, protect India, and think through this crisis but what did they do? Did the PM & the government add sufficient oxygen capacity, ramp up testing, increase hospital beds, ventilators?

Did the PM think long-term about the state of our health infrastructure and start building for the sort of subsequent corona waves that almost every country in the world was experiencing?

It was sheer luck that we emerged out of last year’s nightmare, to a point where we had less than 10,000 new cases in a day early in 2021. We were not testing enough then. We are not testing enough now.

Where was the preparation for this massive second wave? Why were the jumbo facilities put up last year dismantled? Why did they raise oxygen exports over 700 per cent — think of that number, 700 per cent — in the months before this brutal second wave?

What could the government have done differently to address the second wave?

The Modi government was both grossly negligent and blindly overconfident. The BJP announced the end of the pandemic and congratulated the Prime Minister for his “success” even as the second wave was just beginning. The Prime Minister himself is on record as having said that India had successfully fought the pandemic and won.

In reality, there was no coherent strategy.

One, the government should have built massive capacity over the last year — testing, oxygen, hospital beds, ventilators.

Two, they should not have declared victory prematurely.

Three, the Prime Minister and his government did not even acknowledge there was a problem. How can you fix something you don’t even accept exists?

Four, the government did not act on scientific advice or evidence. They continuously ignored rising cases and were busy instead with election campaigns. They encouraged super-spreader events. They even bragged about them. Our Prime Minister and home minister were not even wearing masks in public over the past few months. What sort of a message is that sending to citizens?

Five, most importantly, the only solution we have is vaccination. We are supposed to be the largest manufacturer of vaccines in the world. And yet, India is desperately short of vaccines. …If that is not a failure to plan and execute, what is?

With India seeing around 4 lakh cases a day, is there a case for national emergency?

We are already in the midst of a national emergency. But just declaring something is not the answer. The biggest problem of this government is it announces and then absconds. Now that the situation is completely out of control, they have dropped the ball and thrown it to the states. They have made the states and citizens truly “Aatmanirbhar”. Rely on yourself is the motto. No one will come to help you. Definitely, not the Prime Minister.

The need of the hour is to hold hands, work together and heal our people. India must be the only country in the world facing this massive pandemic without the guidance of an expert and empowered group that is charged with fighting the virus and protecting the people, with planning ahead, anticipating needs and taking the decisions that will result in swift action to save lives.

Government of India has said it repeatedly warned states about the second wave… Would you say the current situation is a collective failure of the Centre and states?

The entire country has already been under the Epidemic Act for more than a year. The Centre has absolute power over states under the Act…. When cases went down, they declared victory, and the Prime Minister took all the credit as he always does. Now that the situation is terrible, why are you blaming the states?

…The Modi government took tens of thousands of crores of donations in his name (PM CARES), without any transparency … States do not even get their GST dues on time. States are dependent on the Modi government for quotas of oxygen, remdesivir and tocilizumab injections.

The Modi government has chained the hands of the states behind their backs, so they are completely powerless, and then asks them to sort out their own affairs. Obviously, the system will collapse.

All adult vaccinations are starting on May 1 along the lines you demanded, but states say they cannot start as they do not have the vaccines. Did you seek the expansion of vaccinations too early?

First, the government set a target of vaccinating 300 million by August. This is the above-45 age category. They managed to fully vaccinate not even 2 per cent of the total population. With the mounting pressure of the government not vaccinating enough, they added another 600 million to the list, by starting vaccinations for the 18-plus group from May 1. But where are the vaccines?

Why did the Modi government abandon the people between age groups of 18 and 44 years by refusing to take responsibility for their vaccination? …What is the strategy beyond two companies? How can that suffice for almost 1 billion people? We need 2 billion doses. Now they are scrambling for vaccines.

Vaccine makers have reduced prices for states. Your comments?

This is the story of “discount sale”, where you mark up the price, and then make a show of reducing it. It is complete eyewash.

Why should states pay more than the Centre to buy vaccines? …Why should there be a difference in price for vaccines for the Centre, the states and the private hospitals?

Madras High Court has held the Election Commission responsible for the Covid situation. Your views?

The court was echoing a widely held view…. I don’t want to make any further comment…. Our institutions are a warning system — they give us feedback and information on how to respond to crisis. But our institutions have been completely destroyed and taken over. The press, judiciary, Election Commission, bureaucracy — none of them have played their role of guardian/watchdog.

This means India today is like a ship in a storm, sailing without any information. Corona is just part of the problem — the real problem is that India now doesn’t have the capacity to respond to any major crisis because of what has been done to its systems.