Evidence-based policymaking

There is statistical data that suggests the impact of the pandemic is still being felt, and that it had a far higher death toll than is acknowledged.

- DEVANGSHU DATTA

In financial year (FY) 2024-25, the Indian Railways (IR) carried 7.15 billion passengers. (Suburban commuters account for around 55 per cent of all rail passengers.)

While this traffic was 5 per cent higher than the 6.9 billion carried in FY24, it was well below the 8 billion mark that IR had carried in every financial year from 2015 to 2020 with a peak of 8.44 billion in FY19. Traffic crashed to just 1.25 billion in FY21. It hasn't fully recovered yet.

Recently released mortality data from the pandemic period also indicates that the official death toll from Covid-19 was massively undercounted. If you know the size of a population, and you have a sense of age cohorts, birth, and mortality trends, you can project how many people are likely to die in the next 12 months. If the number of actual deaths greatly exceeds that estimate, there must be some cause.

The total number of deaths in 2018 and 2019 was 14.5 million, according to civil registration data. But the number of deaths in the pandemic years of 2020 and 2021 was 18.3 million. India, therefore, recorded roughly 3.74 million excess deaths in 2020 and 2021 compared to the two pre-Covid years of 2018 and 2019.