An article referenced in Malaria World this week is A historical perspective of malaria policy and control in India by Sam et al. India is important in the history of the medical establishment malaria transmission narrative because it was where Ronald Ross, the British Army medic who supposedly demonstrated the mosquito plasmodium connection, carried out his research. His research mostly examined other germs, Proteosoma and Halteridium, in birds and Culex mosquitos (not Anopheles). Even at his time his work was downplayed by Grassi and others (see my translation of Grassi’s Studi di uno zoologa sulla malaria). However, the award of the 1902 Nobel prize cemented Ross’ place as the man who found out how malaria is transmitted.
Sam et al, in their historical perspective, sponsored by the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation, point out that when India gained independence in 1947 there were ~75 million cases of malaria and 0.8 million deaths annually. As a result of a campaign using DDT the number of cases reduced to <50,000 and deaths to zero by 1961! But mosquitos, especially Anopheles culicifacies (the most important vector of the nine Anopheles species in India), developed resistance to chlorinated insecticides. So, malathion was introduced instead for internal residual spraying. In the 1980s treatment with Sulfa-pyrimethamine and in the 2000s artesunate plus sulfadoxine-pyrimethamine was added to the programme. All in all, much like the establishment approach everywhere else. Poisoning the environment and prescribing drugs!
Current annual cases in India are reported in the article at fewer than 200,000 and deaths are ~100. In a country the size of India (1.5 billion), is a disease that caused no deaths in 1961 and fewer than 100 now worth attention? Malaria is an illness with non-specific symptoms diagnosed by the presence of microbes in the blood that clean up damaged tissue. If you don’t look for these microbes, you won’t find it. This is why there are no cases in countries supposedly free of malaria (unless the medics look for them because the person recently returned from a malaria country).
The evidence does not suggest there is a major problem with malaria in India.