A MONTH FULL OF ELECTION, IN TIMES OF THE PANDEMIC
Indian elections are GIGANTIC affairs of massive public meetings and huge rallies. They involve millions, rather tens of millions of people — supporters and voters, political workers, charismatic leaders, journalists, policemen and administrative staff. They involve a LOT of intra-and interstate movements.
Elections are necessary for the world humans live in. But, in times of the pandemic by a pathogen that spreads through aerosols and droplets, such humongous human gatherings are also likely to help the new coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2 to ‘jump’ from one individual to the next.
This is why the decision by Election Commission’s of India to conduct a protracted eight-phase election in the state of West Bengal has been a subject of widespread debate, both inside the state, and at national and international levels.
There does exist a constitutional obligation to conduct elections as per schedule. But, was it absolutely essential to conduct state election, which was bound to be fought with exceptional intensity, at a time when the coronavirus had started to roar with increased ferocity ?
There are advocates from both sides, and it will be superfluous to present the points again cos they have already been discussed in so many ways in so many forums. We’d rather spend some time looking into data, all of which is available in the public domain .
The 2021 West Bengal Assembly election was conducted in eight phases. Voting across the state’s 23 districts happened over eight days (Fig.1).The voting dates were — 27th March, followed by 1st, 6th, 10th, 17th, 22nd, 26th and 29th April.
Nine districts — purulia, jhargram, alipurduar, coochbehar, darjeeling, kalimpong, jalpaiguri, north and south dinajpurs, birbhum, and west bardhman — had their elections organized on one day. For the rest — bankura, east and west midnapurs, kolkata, howrah, hooghly, nadia, east bardhman east, north and south 24 paraganas, malda and murshidabad — voting was phased over two days.
The counting of votes was done on 2nd May and most results were declared by that night.
But in the background of this entirely human affair, another count began to rise . The number of people infected with the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2.
Only detailed epidemiological studies can pinpoint index cases and trace all those who got infected and when. That is beyond the scope of this article. But the numbers presented here do illuminate the recent trajectory of the pandemic in West Bengal and its strong correlation with the 8-phase election. Here we go.
Elections do not start on voting day. In India, they commence couple of weeks to a month before the actual date with political meetings and processions that increase in number and strength as the voting day approaches. Hence, it’d not be wrong to consider 12th March (i.e. a fortnight before 1st phase voting) as the beginning of the ‘election phase’. For our present study, I also consider it the time when the virus began to find big crowds well suited for its transmission.
Similarly, from the perspective of viral transmission during the election days, we have to consider COVID cases which got reported even after the results were declared on 2nd May (after all, counting and declaration of results also make officials and political workers to gather in big numbers at the counting centers). Again this is rather arbitrary, but I have chosen 11th May i.e. 15 days after last phase of voting ) as the end of the election phase.
Question is — what is the dynamics of COVID positive cases during West Bengal’s electoral phase? What do the numbers tell us?
The graph is self-explanatory. From 6131 positives detected in the fortnight of 12–26th Mar to 272, 798 during 26th Apr-11th May, it is a rise of 44.4-fold , enough to shock anyone who is not a zombie!
12. But, what is more frightening is the steep rise of the Positivity ratio during this ‘election phase’ (Fig. 3). In simple terms, if there were 2 cases detected for every 100 tests just before the first voting day, it is now at 30–31!! What is even more worrisome is that during this period, the number of tests increased for ~18000/day to >65000/day, and RTPCR tests stayed as the majority. Clearly, the virus has spread far and deep .
Is it possible that a few districts have skewed the state’s values? A closer look at the situation in every district gives one equivocal answer — NO.
To analyse this, the total number of COVID positive cases identified in each district for the 15-day period prior to voting day was compared to the total number of cases identified for the 15-day period following the voting day. For districts which had 2-phase voting, the pre-period commenced 15 days before the first voting day and the post-period ended 15 days after the 2nd voting day.
Fig. 4A-E speak for themselves. The absolute numbers vary because testing and tracing infrastructure varies considerably across districts. However, every district has suffered a massive rise of COVID cases in absolute numbers in the fortnight that followed the election day. The fold increase of ‘positives’ after the voting day is between 3–15 fold for all districts who went to polls during the first six phases (27th March-22nd April) (Table 1) .
It hovers around 1.5–2 fold for the five districts (including Kolkata) which were part of the 7th and 8th phases i.e. voted on 26th and 29th April (Fig. 4D and Table 1). The lower value is probably due to the fact that by the end of April, a month and half of massive election-related gathering and traveling by thousands of people, often in packed transport and shared hotels and messes, had raised the ‘background level’. Moreover, by this time the 2nd wave had overwhelmed the country as a whole. With testing capacities stretched to the limit, a larger number of people might have not been tested . It is also possible that a larger number of people — political participants or general residents — were following anti-COVID measures like masking during the latter days.
CONCLUSION:
To repeat the scientific cliche — ‘correlation is not causation’. But, it is hard not to consider the massive crowds and movements of central paramilitary forces and state administrators (photographs and videos of which have been seen all over media and social media) as the major, if not the only, driver for the present rise of COVID in the state.
It must be recalled that for a country as large as the European continent, there can be no one reason that faciliated better transmission of the virus. It is expected that every state (or, speaking from the perspective of the virus, associations of people who travel within and between states) will have its own major and minor reasons for contributing to India’s tsunami-like second wave. For West Bengal, scientific logic, reinforced by the numbers of the analysis, certainly point towards a role of the long election phase towards increasing COVID numbers to such high levels.
