 It has become customary to say that given its huge population, India is doing much better than the US or Europe in the fight against coronavirus. This is how official sources are trying to explain away the shockingly high numbers of total confirmed cases and total deaths, both of which put India at the third position globally behind the US and Brazil. However, the comparison is not really valid. India needs to be compared not with the US and Europe but to regions of the world with a population's age, economic standards and healthcare access is similar. Such a comparison reveals that in fact, India is doing quite poorly even in comparison to other developing countries. Let us start with cases and deaths as a proportion of the population. This is a far better measure of a country's performance against COVID because country-wise populations vary enormously and it is unreasonable to compare India, which has a population of 138 crore, which say the United Kingdom which has a population of just 7 crore. To adjust for a population, the usual and accepted way is to calculate cases and deaths per 10 lakhs that is per million of the population. As per data available on 31st August, when we compare cases per million, we see that India's tally of 2622 is half of Europe's, one-sixth of North America's and nearly one-seventh of South America. However, when we compare with Asia and Africa, we see that India is far worse than the whole of Asia and has over 2.5 times more cases per million than Africa. These are regions where the countries are similar to India in terms of per capita GDP, median age, poverty and hunger levels and access to healthcare services. In fact, if one were to rank the 106 countries in Asia and Africa in terms of cases per million with the worst at the bottom, India would come in at a very poor 80th position. On the count of deaths per million as well, India fares rather badly. With 47 deaths per million, India is much better off than Europe, which is at roughly 277, while both North and South America are almost 10 times more. But again, if you compare India to Asia and Africa, the real picture is revealed. An average of deaths per million is just 30, while Africa is even lower at a mere 21. In the rankings of all Asian and African countries, India is at 76 out of 106 countries with respect to deaths per million. Now let's see how India is doing in fighting COVID-19 in comparison to its immediate neighbors. Our ability to counter the pandemic seems to be worse even here. When we look at cases per million in these countries, we see that China is at 59, Pakistan at 1,335, Bangladesh at 1,897, Nepal at 1,320, Sri Lanka at 141 and Afghanistan at 977. All much lower than India's tally of 2,622. Similarly, when we look at deaths per million among these countries, China stands at 3, Pakistan at 28, Bangladesh at 26, Nepal at 8, Sri Lanka at 0.6 and Afghanistan at 36. Again all lower than India's death per million rate of 47. There are several factors at work in determining why India is currently better off in some developed countries, but worse off compared with other countries in Asia and Africa. Firstly, the comparison with North America, Europe and even South America is misplaced because the coronavirus hit these regions much earlier than countries in Asia and Africa, with the exception of China of course. To understand this better, let's look at a trajectory of the pandemic spread across Asia, Africa and Europe and North America based on weekly new cases taken at one month's interval for the sake of clarity. Note how the pandemic hit its first peak in Europe in February and a little later in North America. Till about mid-April, both these regions had more cases than Asia and Africa. Cases in Asia steadily rose along a steep curve with no peaks and no flattening ever. By the end of June, North American and Asian cases were seen growing weakly in similar leaps while cases were seen declining in Europe. African cases were much less yet they rose steadily till the end of July after which there was a surprising dip. Clearly the coronavirus arrived and spread in Asia except China and Africa later and its growth is continuous. In China, the number of cases declined after March, Asian cases continued to rise as India experienced the onslaught. North America experienced a second wave in June and July while Europe is still going through its second wave currently. Asia is still continuing to rise mainly because of India. So to compare India with North America and Europe is unreasonable. The virus hits different regions at different times and may even see a resurgence. Besides this, the age of the population is also a major factor. The median age in India is 28 which means that half of India's population is younger than 28. In comparison, the median ages for Europe, USA and UK are 42.7, 38.3 and 40.8 respectively. Also on average, the median age for less developed countries excluding China is 26 years while for more developed countries it is 42.1 years. This is possibly the reason why deaths due to COVID-19 are less in Asia and Africa compared with the more aged population in Europe and North America. Yet why is India fearing so badly? Despite a delayed start to the pandemic and a younger population, India continues to steadily lose its grip over the fight against the pandemic. The reason is the way India's government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his party Ajanta Patil have mindlessly and heartlessly handled the pandemic. From a disastrously conceived and implemented lockdown imposed at a foreign notice to the lack of attention to the needs of the huge population with low incomes and negligible savings, the government's apathy towards the common folk of this country has become clearly obvious. After that, the pension for dramatic announcements rather than solid groundwork, the devotion of energy to use the pandemic for political gain, giving concessions to the super-rich, the lack of attention to healthcare facilities to drive, to centralise all power and the tight fistedness in spending money, including helping state governments, all these have led to this pass. Not only has the pandemic devastated the country but the economy is in a tailspin, with economic growth predicted to dip by up to 10.5% next year. It is a double strike and the people are bearing it with immense pain. And the worst part is the pandemic is still far from over.