India, the world’s most populous democracy, accommodating over 1.36 billion people, a land of juxtaposition, where the poor meekly colonise the streets while the rich observe from their ivory towers. A country home to Bollywood, an industry worth over $2 billion, yet also home to 70 million people who lack access to adequate housing; a country where the wealth gap is excruciatingly obvious, leaking into every aspect of society.
In 2020 the world was crippled by a global pandemic, with countries such as China, the UK and Italy being some of the hardest hit, India however, managed to somehow avoid this seemingly inevitable fate. Scientists around the world were baffled about how India managed to defy the global trends, until they didn’t. India is currently reaching 330,000 cases per day, oxygen canisters are treated like liquid gold, anything with outdoor space is being used as a crematorium. Hospitals are overwhelmed, heaps of corpses are lining alleys like tree lined boulevards, COVID is ravaging communities like hyenas ravishing a corpse. Modi, the current Indian prime minister has been fuelling this inescapable fire, organising campaign rallies, permitting religious gatherings, opening cricket stadiums for fans to swarm among in. While the UK and Italy were being devoured by the deadly disease, Modi stood on a platform, boasting about India’s spectacular success, without a drop of compassion, and it seems now, Modi might be starting to comprehend the situation. Without a doubt, the poor are adversely being affected by this disease, like in every country; however in India it’s exceptionally worse. India’s rich can afford the ventilators and hospital beds, and they steal it right off of the poor’s backs. This morning, a tweet went viral, stating that a woman’s oxygen was seized by the police and redistributed to a ‘VIP’; this story unapologetically illustrates the plight of the poor in today’s India. NGOs and charities are flocking to India, attempting to put a lid on this already out of control catastrophe, India is in a state of emergency and yet seemingly nobody can do anything to help. India was already in a cataclysmic state before the pandemic, with cancerous poverty, inequality, islamophobia, colourism, classism, the list goes on. This calamatic illness seems to have formed just the perfect storm.
