The social repercussions of COVID-19: Learning about Planet India
The world is a big place. Or is it? We have seemingly erased distance with communication technology, mobile devices, and social media. We can send a cat picture from Chicago to Auckland in just one click. Because of this, we tell ourselves that we are “globally connected.” We are the connected society. But are we?
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I am blessed to know many outstanding people across the world. Some are colleagues, some cherished friends. With them, I keep in touch thanks to technology and social media. I feel very close to the people with whom I share a “good morning,” my thoughts, pictures, and voice messages. I am connected. But am I? Or maybe the right question is: who am I connected to?
For example, I am connected to Maíra Aguiar, Brazilian-Portuguese double-PhD bio-mathematician, and a member of the Task Force for research on COVID-19 in the Bask Country, Spain. A private conversation with her, in mid-Summer, prompted me to produce my first video on COVID-19 (See “How an interview on COVID-19 made me think about science communication”).
I wasn’t planning on doing follow-up interviews. But at the same time I didn’t lose interest in the topic: besides watching the news, I kept reaching out to my friends. One day I asked an Indian friend to tell me something about the situation in her home country, because I realised I didn’t know much about it.
I live in Brussels, Belgium. I watch the news daily, so you would think I am an informed person. Yet, I realised that mainstream media over-exposes us to some topics, and keep us in the dark about others. Much news focuses on Europe and the United States, but what about India? How is New Delhi managing social distancing? What about rural areas? What about all the places we never think of — what about the RoW? (Rest of the World: an expression I first encountered –you guessed it– in the U.S., and that I use a lot because Europeans, we are pretty good navel-gazers, too.) What about the people who are not us, and who are not in our bubble? People who are literally outside our world, our view. We live in different worlds, or call them ‘realities.’ Different points of view from where life itself is a different thing — like the Wizard of Oz, that appears in different forms to Dorothy and her companions. Use the metaphor you like, but take a moment to consider this. We live in different worlds. And rural India is not in my world. It’s like another planet. Planet India.
So, not knowing much about COVID in India, I did what people do when they don’t know something: I asked. In response to my request, my dear friend sent me a voice message about 15 minutes long. I enjoy listening to voice messages, especially when I wander South of Brussels. That day was no exception: I tightened my sneakers and trotted down the road. I hit play.
As I walked and listened to the message under the pretty sky, the last thing I expected was a shocking revelation. But then my friend started talking about the impact of COVID on employment, housing, families, and the phenomenon of domestic migration in India, the “millions walking home.” [1–3] I was caught off guard. I slowed down my pace and forgot about the pretty sky.
At this point, I was walking through a wealthy suburban area, with those beautiful houses one after the other, those front lawn bushes for some privacy, those big cars in the driveways. All so clean, you know what I mean? And in my ears: my friend’s voice talking about people with limited access to drinking water, making their way back to their homes in rural India, along train tracks, often dropping dead for dehydration. [4–5] You know why we don’t talk about these things on the news? Because it’s intolerable. Humanly intolerable. By contrast, American politics is almost palatable. Don’t get me wrong, it’s bad enough. But there’s a reason for the expression “first world problem.”
This was so much more than COVID-19: the repercussions of the epidemic on Indian society stretch much beyond the risk of catching the virus. The management of the health emergency has imposed changes that the system was not ready to accommodate, and that’s how millions have suffered from evils other than “the virus,” like social discrimination [6] and hunger. [7] Other systems in the world suffered some pressure, including Europe, where each country was forced to revisit its welfare, and the United States, where millions of Americans lost their jobs along with their health care. But starvation at such a large scale is just not heard of in Europe. Nobody would have to walk the distance from France to Sweden to be reunited with their family. It’s a different planet.
On my way home, I hit record. I asked my friend, as respectfully as I could, if she’d be willing to let me share her voice message online. I was not sure that asking such a thing was appropriate. This was technically not an interview, and it crossed my mind that I was letting the podcaster in me go too far. But at the same time, there was something in her story that I felt compelled to share, as if there was a moral obligation for me to do so. I thought, maybe this is what journalists do: they know a good story when they hear one, and they give it a voice. I told my friend I would prepare a video with a short introduction, that she could approve before publication. She agreed and I got down to work.
My friend is not just an amazing storyteller, but an expert one, because she has worked as a public health official in India, and she is currently doing research work on the interaction between new medical technologies and social actors. She wished to remain anonymous, but this does not take anything away from her testimony. She also suggested some of the references at the bottom of this page.
If you don’t know much about how the pandemic has been affecting the people of India, let my friend tell you.
By Federica Bressan, Stony Brook University, New
York, e-mail: federica.bressan@stonybrook.edu is a researcher and science communicator. She hosts the podcast Technoculture and writes about science and society, see http://technoculture-podcast.com/
[1] Over 1 crore migrant labourers returned to home states on foot during Mar-Jun: Govt, The Indian Express, September 22, 2020
[2] India is walking home: Millions of migrant workers flee locked-down cities, The Irish Times, Mar 30, 2020
[3] India racked by greatest exodus since partition due to coronavirus, The Guardian, Mar 30, 2020
[4] Coronavirus India: Death and despair as migrant workers flee cities, BBC News, May 23, 2020
https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-asia-52776442
[5] Parliament session: No data available on migrants’ deaths during lockdown, says govt, The Indian Express, September 14, 2020
[6] They treat us like stray dogs: Migrant workers flee India’s cities, National Geographic, May 27, 2020
[7] How citizens are helping migrants stranded by the coronavirus lockdown, The Indian Express, May 19, 2020
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