From the OpIndia article:
- "A few weeks back, controversial left-wing US media outlet New York Times had come up with imaginary numbers..." (hyperbole, ad-hominem)
- "The low death rate in the country has become a major concern for the western press, who are trying hard to depict India in a bad light." (Are they? Why? Is the "western press" working in concert on this project?)
- "However, the entire analysis done in the article was based on ‘estimates’ based on randomly selected numbers" (So the allegation is that the researcher and/or the Economist selected numbers randomly to represent the Covid death toll in India?)
- "[...] it seems like the Indian government has finally decided to take on the misinformation warfare being propagated by a certain section of western media" (Does this seem like an unbiased presentation of facts?)
The implication, as far as I can tell, is that "western media" is seeking to embarrass the current leaders of Indian government out of pure spite. However, to my eyes, a more believable story is that the government of India is embarrassed by the high Covid death tolls and would like to adjust the numbers downward.
From a story in NPR:
> FRAYER: There is another reason why India's coronavirus numbers may be skewed - hubris. In early March, India's health minister declared the pandemic over, but cases were actually creeping up, and some politicians didn't want to ruin the narrative. Dr. A. Velumani runs a nationwide chain of medical labs. He told local media his labs have come under pressure from local politicians to manipulate coronavirus tests and report fewer positive results. [^1]
We saw this very same narrative play out here in the United States under the Trump administration, and just like in the OpIndia story, when confronted with evidence they had mishandled the response to the pandemic, the government responded, "Fake news! They're out to get me!"
The New York Times article mentioned in the OpIndia piece [^2] also seems to be in good faith, explaining how they arrived at their estimates in great detail.
To summarize: when I put on my critical-thinking cap, what I see is the Economist, the New York Times, and NPR presenting good-faith, easy-to-believe arguments that the death toll in India is higher than reported by the Indian government, and OpIndia presenting the difficult-to-believe argument that it isn't, but that western media wants to depict the government of India in a bad light for unknown reasons.
[^1]: https://www.npr.org/2021/04/29/992122467/indias-real-death-t...
[^2]: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/05/25/world/asia/in...