Ruth Pollard, Columnist

India's Political Parties Rally On Despite Omicron

The lessons of the last election season and its attendant wave of Covid infections seem to have been forgotten.

January 4, 2022 at 11:00 PM UTC

Ruth Pollard is a Bloomberg Opinion Managing Editor. Previously she was South and Southeast Asia government team leader at Bloomberg News and Middle East correspondent for the Sydney Morning Herald.

A BJP rally in Uttar Pradesh in December.
Photographer: Ritesh Shukla/Getty Images AsiaPac

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Covid-19 cases are surging in India. Still, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his political opponents are on the campaign trail. The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party plans the “biggest ever political rally” in the northern state of Punjab (which is also under a range of virus curbs). As many as 300,000 people are expected at Wednesday’s gathering, organizers told local media. Meanwhile, the capital, New Delhi, is under a strict nighttime and weekend curfew. Its Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, who belongs to a rival party and is just back from a heavy few days of campaigning across the north, announced on Tuesday he’d tested positive for the virus.

We’ve seen this movie before.