India Is What Happens When Rich People Do Nothing
The chamber of horrors the country now finds itself in was not caused by any one man, or any single government
By Vidya Krishnan
This month, Arvind Kejriwal, the chief minister of Delhi, India’s capital and home to millions, tweeted that the city was facing an “acute shortage” of medical oxygen. The message was illuminating on a number of levels: First, his resorting to social media, rather than working through official channels, points to a lack of confidence in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government (though this is also at least partly because Kejriwal does not belong to Modi’s party); second, Kejriwal’s tweet emphasizes how Twitter has become a principal means by which Indians appeal for help.
Individual tales of people finding oxygen or a hospital bed via Twitter cannot hide the reality: There will soon be no beds left. Medicines are running out. There aren’t enough ambulances to carry the sick to get care, nor are there enough vans to carry the dead to graveyards. There aren’t even enough graveyards, nor enough wood to burn the necessary pyres.
Laying the blame for India’s coronavirus disaster — hundreds of thousands of new cases and thousands of deaths each day, both of which are certainly a huge…
