Kudrat: How did we get here, India?
People wait to get on a bus at a station in New Delhi on April 20, 2021, to leave for their places as India battles a record-breaking spike in Covid-19 coronavirus infections that has forced the capital into a week-long lockdown.
The people of India can’t breathe. For millions, it is because they are suffering from the most acute form of Covid-19 to emerge yet, while for the rest, it is because the government’s apathy has its knee on their neck.
While a part of my heart is filled with gratitude that my eight-year-old son and I are sitting safely in Kenya, a country that is our home now, the other part of my heart skips a beat every time I hear my phone ring.
The distress, the anxiety, the anguish, the anger, the heartbreak is unexplainable.
If you ever watched the movie Contagion and felt those chills in your spine, imagine seeing it unfold right before your eyes. The double-mutant strain of coronavirus that has emerged in India has caused an apocalypse, the worst ever crisis faced ever since the country was partitioned in 1947.
India is in an unfathomable crisis. Covid is no longer a theory, a conspiracy or a story. It is a reality with a face and a name.
My social media feed is full of condolence messages, SOS posts and friends losing their loved ones. Isolation is not an option; so many are running around trying to save their loved ones, some with symptoms knowing too well that they are positive yet running from pillar to post to save their parents or grandparents.
We have all lost someone we know, someone we love, someone we have heard of, to this disease that has broken the spirit of every Indian, every human in the world.
The reports we hear about lack of oxygen supplies, the scarcity of medicines, people collapsing on roads and outside medical centres and religious places that have been turned into wards are no longer mere stories. It is the grim reality. What is being reported is just a tip of an iceberg, says a friend whose father passed away in a small town in Lucknow and had to wait outside the mortuary with ticket number 76.
Covid gives no time to mourn. You lose a loved one and swiftly run to save another. A report by Rana Ayyub on Time magazine’s website quotes, as an example, that in a crematorium in the state of Madhya Pradesh, 94 bodies were cremated in a day but only three were reported in the government data, according to a leading news channel Times Now.
Frantic calls are being made for medicinal supplies such as Tabiflu, Remedesivir and oxygen cylinders but still, the country hangs between death and despair.
A friend from an influential background, who chooses to remain anonymous, tells me how her entire family tested positive and fell critically ill, and while she managed to get them hospitalised, the grief-stricken yet angry eyes of many wailing patients huddled outside the hospital gates still haunt her.
Save lives
Aparna Jain @Aparna, a leadership coach, author and activist in India, tells us how heartbreaking it is to even help people grief-stricken and seeking help to save lives.
Mahesh Rao, also an author and someone who spent his early years in Nairobi says, "India is going through pure hell and we have no idea when this will end".
Although Covid has brought the country to its knees, it is the leaders who run the democracy who have strangled the hope of its citizens.
A report in @theQuint, quoting Professor Bhramar Mukherjee, an epidemiologist at Michigan University, says if there is no intervention now, by May 2021, India will witness 500,000 cases and 3,000 deaths per day. How did we get here? How did this spiral into this catastrophe?
What infuriates me is the sheer callousness of the government, allowing tens of thousands of people to participate in the Kumbh mela pilgrimage in Haridwar and running ads in the dailies telling people that it was safe to participate.
Sonam Mahajan, a political analyst, says “The world media is portraying the Indian COVID situation in a certain fashion now. The first wave was pretty severe as well. I come from Jammu and Kashmir and at least three of my relatives died sudden deaths. It was only after their death that they were detected COVID-19 positive. In Jammu province, there is no infrastructure. People are fetching for themselves. In the remote towns of Rajouri and Poonch, situation is even worse. The only option you have if you are infected is to sit at home and pray for a miracle.”
Crisis
The Indian media is doing an irresponsible job. There is one section of media that is absolving the government like nothing has happened. Any political leader who raised an early alarm about the second wave was accused of fanning frenzy by this section of media. Common people sharing their ordeal and criticising the administration for the crisis are being trolled and accused of spreading negativity and furthering an anti-govt agenda.
Sonam Mahajan
Mahajan warns that when there is a pandemic, the only people who should be allowed to assess the threat on television shows meant for public consumption should be doctors and experts and not the agenda-driven journalists who enjoy the privileges that the common man does not even have remote access to.
She also agrees that Kumbh mela should not have happened in the first place even though but it is not the only cause of what India is witnessing today.
“The worsening of the situation started long ago. The government should have stopped NRIs settled in the UK from joining farmers protests in Delhi. As per many media reports, 81 percent of Punjab samples had tested positive for UK variant in March itself. Out of 401 samples collected between Jan 1st to Mar 10 were sent for genome sequencing and 326 samples showed the presence of B.1.1.7 variant. The centre warned the state and the state asked the centre to focus on mass vaccination,” she says.
“Where is the accountability? You know, there’s a problem and its origins but you don’t do anything to prevent it. Why? Why were the flights from the UK not suspended immediately? Why were those who had nothing to do with either farmers or farm bills allowed to come to India and join the protests when the world had already taken a note of the new deadly UK variant?”
Mahajan adds that in Bengal, all political leaders engaged public in massive rallies. This was amidst a devastating pandemic and “extremely irresponsible of anyone who calls himself, a leader. The public should reject such leaders at the very outset for jeopardising their lives.”
She adds that “what we lack right now is not just oxygen or medicines or facilities, we lack accountability.”
“The centre is blaming states and vice versa. Anyone pointing out the mismanagement and harassment being faced by the doctors to suppress the number of infections is being labelled a political agent. Image is the last thing, one should be bothered about when people are just dropping dead. Some of the visuals from Agra and Delhi are heartbreaking,” she says.
India’s classic problem is more about our politicians needing validation from the foreign media than protecting their people. Some of our friends are angry that America didn’t immediately come to India’s rescue and delayed lifting the curbs on the export of vaccine raw materials because its priority is to vaccinate Americans first. I would want to ask them if it ever occurred to them that why do Indians not keep India first? Your immediate priority should always be to protect the people, you are elected to serve. Charity begins at home.
Sonam Mahajan
Despite the criticism and warnings from health experts on the second wave, leaders participated in political rallies as five Indian states go to elections in May. What is worse is how the video of the rally was shared on social media despite the spiralling deaths and Covid cases.
Why were the oxygen generation systems not set up well in advance? Why has the country’s health infrastructure crumbled? Why aren’t there enough medical supplies? Did the State Governments fail to use the PM Cares Fund allocated by the Central Government to build Oxygen plants? Why has India turned into this tragic story?
Compellingly
As much as the government may compellingly take down the Twitter posts or manage the social media wrath, there is no denying that the Government has failed its citizens. The Madras High Court recently pulled up the Election Commission saying that they should probably be booked for murder for causing the second wave.
Aditya Raj kaul @AdityaRajKaul, contributing editor @CNNNews18 talks to us.
Call it India’s complacency, government failure, or absolute indifference, allowing gatherings, weddings, political rallies, the ‘super spreader’ events aggravated and pushed us to this threshold. Kenya cannot afford to take any chances. Let Kenya never become a funeral pyre.
Even as I mourn the deaths in India, I implore each one of us here in Kenya to mask up and follow the Ministry of Health Covid guidelines, even as I urge the government here to meticulously develop healthcare infrastructure in case of adversity.
Let us all socially distance now so that when we gather again, we don’t miss anyone.
