No government wants to be overseeing the fallout of a pandemic, especially of a new virus which seems to be mutating at breakneck speed. And there are many reactions that a government at the helm of a crisis might have.

The first and most desirable reaction would be to assess the situation and see how to rectify past missteps and try and save the day to whatever extent possible. Another less desirable reaction is to use its ministers and supporters – those who can string a sentence together – to tweet, write, speak and mime praise for the said government, and deflect all blame and absolve its leader of responsibility.

We in India are not only reeling from a pandemic which shows no sign of abating, but are now witnessing cabinet ministers and ministers of state doing contortions while twisting the truth and praising the prime minister. Which is why, if you could tear your eyes away from aviation minister Hardeep Singh Puri continuously justifying the building of the Central Vista at this time, you’d have noticed MPs and ministers of state like Kiren Rijiju and Anurag Thakur tweeting an article from a news site called the Daily Guardian.

The opinion piece, subtly titled “PM MODI HAS BEEN WORKING HARD; DON’T GET TRAPPED IN THE OPPOSITION’S BARBS”, is written by Sudesh Verma. To show my dedication to Mr Modi, I have read the entire article and oh, what a wondrous tale Mr Verma has spun. I’ll just address a few points, because the article is 2,780 words too long, so pardon my brevity.

As the title explains, the article is not about why India is in the state it’s in despite a great leader and months of lockdown followed by chest-thumping announcements of how the country has beaten the virus. Instead, it’s about a far more heinous matter: Why is the media questioning the prime minister for the government’s actions and inaction in regards to the pandemic? Clearly Mr Verma didn’t get the memo explaining what journalism is supposed to entail. Or maybe the memo has yellowed slightly.

What he’s indulged in through the article is neither journalism nor public relations. It’s fiction writing at its worst.

Just to put things in context, India currently has run out of vaccines in most states, there is still an oxygen shortage in many metropolitan cities, patients have died because they could not get adequate medical care, nearly 100 dead bodies were found floating in the Ganga in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh – and we haven’t heard or seen the prime minister or the home minister ever since the Bengal election debacle, unless you count Mr Modi’s Mann Ki Baat poster asking us to celebrate the positivity of Indians.

I’m assuming Mr Verma is aware of these facts, going by the fantastical tale he has written. He takes the high road and blames the chief ministers for doing “a splendid job by crying and trying to do politics and express their helplessness.” Nothing like a pointless jibe to strengthen your case.

According to him, “Here is a prime minister who tries to work silently when a crisis comes and does not react to political statements since this is not the time to take the bull by the horns.” Now, this is not a falsehood. The prime minister has been working so silently ever since the Bengal election was fought and lost, that he might well have relocated to the Rudra cave. Our home minister is missing in action as well.

At one point, Verma seems to be speaking to himself and critiquing this terrible sycophant’s handbook that he’s written. He writes, “Facts and logic work no more.” How mature. But grammar and sentence construction immediately get the better of him while telling us that Modi is like Krishna. “But we must ponder, are we doing the right thing by targeting a man without even a shade of civility?” Why would he say that Mr Modi does not have even a shade of civility? With friends like these, who needs enemies?

He questions, “Have we ever thought that there is a huge shortage of MBBS graduates and specialists in this country?...A question needs to be asked here: why was this not thought of earlier?” I agree, what was the prime minister and his band of merry men and women doing for the past seven years? Planning the Central Vista? Say it isn’t so.

Verma goes on to praise the short- and long-term measures taken by Mr Modi. It seems “the Prime Minister imposed a nationwide lockdown since he knew that the country was not prepared to face the crisis. His strategy paid off even as our economy slid to an unimaginable point.” Unless it hasn’t struck our illogical Indian, neither did the lockdown help the economy, nor did it help quell the spread of the pandemic. A lockdown would have worked if that time had been spent in evaluating medical infrastructure in the country or putting a crisis plan in place. But those would be such boring things to do, when we could bang plates instead.

According to Verma, “The Centre had written a letter to four states – Maharashtra, Kerala, Chhattisgarh and West Bengal – in January 2021, asking them to take precautions and warning them about impending danger.”

Which then begs the question, why did the Centre insist on political rallies and a multi-phased election in a state facing a second surge? After all, Modi held 23 rallies in 14 days in Bengal. Union home minister Amit Shah held 79 rallies, roadshows and town halls in 20 days. The BJP stationed over 52 union ministers, MPs, chief ministers and cabinet ministers to campaign in Bengal. Around 15 to 17 senior BJP and RSS leaders were stationed in Bengal for more than three months. Is Verma trying to say that the Centre knowingly put the lives of Bengal’s denizens at risk?

I am not even going to address the outright lies of how many meetings he claims Modi held on Covid between April and May. And how much oxygen has been allotted to non-BJP states. Going by the blatant mistruths, it is clear the Daily Guardian is not a guardian of facts. Also, one would expect that the prime minister of a country reeling under a pandemic would hold daily meetings to review the situation.

While Verma claims that Mr Modi “is the one who stressed the need to vaccinate people” and that “those who can afford can take it from private hospitals as well”, he fails to mention that there are no vaccines to be had for love or money. Or that we only ordered the second round of vaccines as late as the last week of April.

Verma also asks plaintively, “Why was Kumbh Mela allowed to take place in Haridwar? This could have been cancelled. It was for the state government to decide whether it was feasible to organise such a large mela and yet follow the Covid protocol.”

The bottomline: nothing is our leader’s fault. Governance during a pandemic, any crisis that could be a blotch on his fine career – it’s always someone else’s fault. In this case, the various states. Even if it happens to be a BJP state.

The article, if you survive the 2,780 words, ends with a veiled threat. Verma says, “Because of space constraints [2780 words!! What was he planning to write? The Iliad?], I have focused largely on what the Prime Minister has done and how unfair we have been to his efforts. In the next, if needed, I would write how various chief ministers have failed their respective states.” Just the thought of reading another terrible tome is enough for one to start praising Modi.

So, who is this fine scribe? Verma is a fair and unbiased commenter. He is the convener of the media relations department of the BJP and represents the party as a spokesperson on TV debates. He has authored the book Narendra Modi: The Game Changer. The views expressed are personal. You only wish he’d kept the views to himself. Before joining the BJP, he was a senior editor at NewsX which is owned by ITV which also owns the Daily Guardian and Sunday Guardian.

A word of advice for the Daily Guardian which seems less Guardian and more Denver Guardian. Propaganda is great if you can pull it off. But the name of this “news site” and the veracity of Verma’s article is reminiscent of the fake news website, Denver Guardian, which had published “news” on Hillary Clinton three days before the 2016 US election claiming that an FBI agent investigating Clinton had been found dead in a Maryland house fire. Is that really the playbook any news site wants to follow?

The question one must ask is, why is the Modi government bumbling at public relations and propaganda? Granted that no government of a country teeming with as many citizens as India has, would have immediately been able to manage this pandemic or deal with the fallout of this virus. But instead of trotting out talking heads on news channels and articles such as these – that are so removed from reality that they would be laughable if we weren’t dealing with a pandemic and an indifferent government – Mr Modi would do himself a favour if he simply apologised for the wartime situation we find ourselves in.

Maybe Modi’s trainee spin doctors should follow his example and acquaint themselves with the proverb “silence is golden”. Instead, they seem to be actively following another great man’s law of propaganda: if you repeat a lie often enough, it becomes the truth.