Convenience Big Store: The terrible price of India’s “medical apartheid”

3 May, 2021

In the headlines

Social distancing rules will be scrapped in the UK from 21 June, meaning pubs, restaurants, theatres and cinemas can fully reopen, although Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab warns "something around masks" may remain. The cap on the number of mourners at funerals will be lifted from 17 May, a month ahead of schedule. The leader of the Scottish Conservatives, Douglas Ross, says the PM should "of course" resign if he is found to have breached ministerial rules over funding the Downing Street refurbishment. The final episode of Line of Duty was watched by 12.8 million viewers, capturing more than 56% of the UK's TV audience.

Comment of the day

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The terrible price of India's "medical apartheid"

India's Covid "chamber of horrors" is the greatest moral failure in a generation says Vidya Krishnan in The Atlantic. We have some of the best-trained doctors on the planet and our country is a "pharmacy for the world". But while our world-class private hospitals cater for the rich and medical tourists from abroad, the poor rely on state-run infrastructure "held together with duct tape". It's "medical apartheid". Meanwhile, Prime Minister Narendra Modi is accused of "hoarding life-saving drugs" and holding "election rallies cum super-spreader events" that would make Donald Trump blush.

This is what happens when the "upper caste" can buy the best care (or "flee to safety in private jets"), wilfully unaware of the "ricketiness" of the healthcare system. And it's not the first time India has disgraced itself like this. In 1984 a leak at a pesticide factory in Bhopal unfolded into the "world's worst industrial disaster", leaving more than 5,000 dead and a legacy of cancer and deformity that persists to this day. The area is still a "toxic mess", but rich Indians have always ignored it. Now they sit alongside the poor, "clutching their pearls" as loved ones fail to get ambulances, doctors, medicine and oxygen, facing a reckoning that has previously only plagued the vulnerable.

Read the full article here.

Voters find Johnson's flaws reassuring

Not since Margaret Thatcher has a prime minister "provoked such visceral loathing", says Janice Turner in The Times. Even the mention of "Johnson" – "the familiar 'Boris' risks an embolism" – makes some of my friends pound the table: "Bullingdon, adulterous, selfish, reckless, lying, sleazy, chancer..." So why doesn't this show in the polls? Why do people warm to this "terrible human being"? The answer is not just that his supporters have "priced in" his flaws. They actually find them reassuring: the six (or so) children, the two divorces, the demanding girlfriend, the weight problem. "His life is a blur of chaos and drama." In popular parlance, he's "a messy bitch".

Nobody believes our PM, with his "filthy car and ill-fitting suits", cares about wallpaper. And when they see "Carrie Antoinette" running up a gargantuan décor bill, they think of the sister-in-law who went bonkers doing a kitchen extension. So long as Johnson didn't "wang it on expenses", they'll shrug. The PM's supporters instinctively distrust neat, smooth professional men; they find lawyerly Keir Starmer more trustworthy than Johnson, but believe the latter, "forever undone by his own appetites", is more likely to sympathise with their own frailties. If the pandemic were out of control, it would be different. But for once Britain is the envy of the world, and no one wants to listen to a "pursed-lip puritan... they'd rather dance with the messy bitch".

Read the full article here.

Property

George and Amal Clooney have snapped up a château and vineyard in Provence, according to Le Figaro. They've picked a perfect time to invest: because of the pandemic, an estimated 1,500 château owners in France have put their properties up for sale, with prices up to 40% lower than at the peak of the market. This 23-bedroom chateau near Bourges, in the Cher département, is yours for €1.82m.

Noted

Chinese investors have snapped up at least £135bn worth of assets in UK-based businesses, says The Sunday Times, almost twice as much as was previously suspected. Buyers from China and Hong Kong own stakes in Thames Water, Heathrow airport, UK Power Networks and 17 private schools, as well as £10bn worth of property and £57bn worth of shares in FTSE companies. More than 80 of the 200 investments have taken place since 2019.

Snapshot

Inside politics

Boris Johnson's explosion of rage against Keir Starmer at last week's PMQs was a sign of the frustration he's been feeling in recent months, says Dan Hodges in The Mail on Sunday. His trusted allies have "either defected to the enemy or gone missing in action". It's been getting to him for a while, says one minister: "He hasn't been receiving the support he thinks he needs. So he's taken to trying to find quiet rooms in No 10 to tuck himself away. Once they found him taking refuge in a toilet."

Snapshot answer

It's Cleo Watson, a protegée of Dominic Cummings and former No 10 insider, who is writing an erotic thriller set in Westminster. Described as a cross between House of Cards and 50 Shades of Grey, Whips! is said to feature characters based on real-life political figures. "It is likely to give the lawyers a lot of work," a friend of the 32-year-old told The Mail on Sunday.