This week on NL Hafta, Abhinandan Sekhri, Raman Kirpal, Manisha Pande are joined by Arunabh Saikia of Scroll.

Arunabh elaborates upon his recent report on India's oxygen crisis and what caused it. The Narendra Modi government, he explains, planned to set up 150 oxygen generation over eight months ago but only a few of them are up and running. "They only take four to six weeks to set up and we couldn't even do that, it talks a lot about our response,” he says.

Talking about the oxygen shortage in hospitals, Raman notes, "Adding up industrial and state plants we do have enough O2 but there was no plan of distribution in times of crisis.”

The panel then discuss how data related to coronavirus testing and vaccination isn’t reliable. "The question is of the quality of data. The given data seems difficult to believe because of many reasons," says Arunabh.

The conversation also spans the Delhi high court's observations on the handling of the pandemic, paucity of labs and resources for genome sequencing, inadequate supply chains, the ongoing elections, new vaccine policy, and more.

Listen.

Text by Ritika Chauhan.

Hafta letters: Covid coverage, caste violence, and profanity