India’s Covid Crisis: A Country Left Unprepared
Every night in India a woman lights a match in one clay lamp. She lights the flame to pray for a long life for her family. I imagine that she has repeated this every night for a very long time, but in May she began to light two lamps every night: one for her family, and another for her neighbor. The woman for which the second lamp is lit is Viveki Kapoor, a wife and caring mother. Viveki is also a nurse in India during one of the largest Covid-19 outbreaks in the world.
India was first exposed to the coronavirus in January of 2020, but wasn’t as affected as places like China and Italy. They experienced a spike in September but the cases steadily decreased. Now, India is experiencing a spike four times that of September’s with about 400,000 new cases (almost 25 million total) and 270,000 deaths, though the figure is surely higher because not everyone is getting tested, especially in rural areas where testing sites are inaccessible.
Viveki is in charge of the intensive care unit at her small hospital in Delhi. Since the outbreak in India began, her ICU has received so many patients that they’ve begun to turn people away. And it’s not just the sick leaving, many of the nurses have quit, saying that staying is not worth the risk.
Viveki is constantly exhausted from working overtime, but still continues to cheer up her patients who come in fearing that they may never come out. Viveki tells her patients the story of the lion and the deer: “I tell them that a deer runs faster, but the lion is still able to catch it because it stumbles when it’s afraid. So, I tell my patients that you must think positive, if you think negative, the virus will win.”
Although everyone is afraid and in constant disbelief, tragedy is bonding them together. Viveki says that patients are becoming more cooperative and understanding with the nurses. The patients see that they are working very hard and are trying to take care of their nurses just as the nurses have been taking care of them. But neither Viveki nor her coworkers can prevent the deaths of these caring patients, and it’s not because they don’t have anyone lighting a lamp and praying for them, they are dying because there are no resources to save them.
This second wave of the virus is causing shortages of oxygen, medicine, and hospital beds. This has caused many desperate relatives to buy supplies off of the black market, including buying respirators for up to ₹70,000.
Arveena Sharma, a young lawyer outside of New Delhi has helped many patients and relatives get medical help during the pandemic. She uses the word “vultures” to describe the people selling supplies on the black market, and I agree with her. In a time of unrest, danger, and indescribable fear, why is someone allowed to put a price on your family member, your friend, or your own head? Why does someone get to decide how much it should cost to heal someone else, and why do they get to turn people away when they don’t own what their loved one is worth? “You are standing in front of me with something which might save me and you’re looking at my pocket,” says Sharma, describing how immoral and shameful this system is.
As a new respirator becomes available, wood becomes more unattainable. This may seem odd, but apart from the expected shortage of medical supplies, wood is now a valuable commodity and is hard to come by due to the second wave of coronavirus, which isn’t something you’d expect or have seen from other hard hit countries. This is because the majority Hindu population cremates their dead. Just as respirators and medicine were overpriced on the black market, wood for funeral pyres, crematorium spaces, and hearses are now unavailable unless you have the money to spend. This has caused many people to lay their loved ones to rest in the Ganges river, but now dozens of bodies have made their way back to shore, a reminder that no one is at peace while chaos is still raging.
Viveki Kapoor, the nurse from Delhi says that she always takes pride in being Indian, but she is outraged and frustrated to see what is happening and blames the government for being too caught up in winning elections to see what they have done to the country. It’s not just Viveki who blames the Indian government for the crisis. Bina Agarwal, a professor of development economics and environment claims that “the pandemic has once again highlighted the extreme international inequality in access to lifesaving vaccines and drugs.” She’s referring to the scarcity of lifesaving supplies, and not the ones that are being sold on the black market, the ones that the Indian government was supposed to provide. The Indian government didn’t order enough vaccines or prioritize vaccinations which is reflected in its 1.8% vaccination rate.
While it’s easy to blame India for the tragedy they are experiencing, issues that may expand to the rest of the world are equally the responsibility of other countries, specifically ones that aren’t in crisis and are available to help. While some countries are sending oxygen, medical supplies, and vaccines to India, they are simultaneously closing their borders, and before President Biden, the US wasn’t exporting anything to aid India.
Ramanan Laxminarayan, an epidemiologist says that “even out of a sense of self-protection, rich countries should have planned much better for vaccinating the entire world and increasing production,” and that even with closed borders, “what happens in India doesn’t stay in India.”
Personally, I cannot come up with a single cent, grain of rice, much less a coherent reaction to what is happening in India. I am deeply saddened and heartbroken to see people dying due to preventable circumstances that were created, in part by my own country’s negligence. Watching the video above was depressing and anxiety inducing, because in a pandemic that has affected every person on this planet, I realized that it could have been me pleading for help for my mother, and later burying her. It could have been me or you, but instead it was Balaji’s sister, Rohit, and hundreds of more undeserving people.
Just like Viveki’s neighbor, please light a match and pray for India.
What can be done to help:
Sadly there is not much that you can do besides donating to organizations who will send medical supplies to India:
New York Times resource list:
Petition to send extra US vaccines to India:
References:
India’s COVID-19 Disaster May Be Turning Into an Even Bigger Global Crisis (Time Magazine)
India’s COVID crisis pushes up the cost of living — and dying (Reuters)
