Indholdsfortegnelse for May 31, 2021 i India Today

At the end of his seventh year as the country’s prime minister, Narendra Modi would never have thought his relationship with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) would be on such slippery ground. After all, pracharak-turnedpolitician Modi has delivered on at least two of the Sangh’s obsessions—the Ram Mandir in Ayodhya and the abolition of Art. 370 and with it Jammu & Kashmir’s special status. Yet, the second Covid surge—where the country has officially reported some 40,000 deaths in the first 10 days of May—has caused much friction between the Modi regime and the Sangh. The focus of Sangh affiliates right now is on relief work but there is growing discomfort about the near-absence of the government and the political leadership on the ground. Unlike last year, the prime minister has…

The most severe cyclonic storm recorded in the Arabian Sea since the early 1900s, cyclone Tauktae made landfall in Gujarat on May 17 and has devastated three coastal states in India—the other two being Maharashtra and Goa. The cyclone, according to unconfirmed reports, has claimed 60 lives and destroyed property at a humongous scale. Over the past week, the Indian Navy and the Indian Coast Guard have mounted several joint search and rescue operations to bring to shore stranded crew members from adrift barges. As Tauktae gradually weakens in intensity, the country, already dealing with a devastating second wave of Covid, must start picking up the pieces.…

TEAM AHMEDABAD, Ahmedabad What it has done Provided financial and logistical support for medical supplies and to set up hospitals IN APRIL, as state governments across India began imposing lockdowns to contain the second wave of Covid-19, Captain Ankur Suri, an Airbus pilot with Indigo Airlines, based in Ahmedabad, was wondering what he and his colleagues could do to help. That was when Suri’s school friend from Bhopal, Rahul Kothari called him. Kothari, a state level office bearer with the BJP in Madhya Pradesh, had been helping those in need who were unable to get hospital beds or medicines. Since Suri had announced on the school WhatsApp group that he and his colleagues were looking to financially help to those in need, Kothari took him up on the offer, asking…

COVID CARE NETWORK West Bengal What it has done Conducted awareness drives and provided medical resources to rural areas HOW DOES ONE explain the danger of Covid to people who have little direct experience of it—such as the people of Ayodhya Hills in West Bengal’s Purulia? Members of the Covid Care Network (CCN) were faced with this problem while on a Covid-awareness drive. For instance, the village headman of Ayodhya Hills said, “Covid is a phenomenon of polluted city life. It will never reach us.” It took some nimble arguments—such as asking what would happen if an infected person was to travel to their village—to convince people that mask wearing was essential. CCN members also made use of popular folk art, like Chhau dances and street plays, to explain what…

“NO HEARSE WAS AVAILABLE. THE RED VOLUNTEERS MEMBERS CARRIED MY MOTHER’S BODY ON THEIR SHOULDERS TO THE CREMATORIUM”RATHINDRANATH PRAMANIK RED VOLUNTEERS West Bengal What it has done Helped with hospital admissions, arranged for medicines and oxygen and assisted in cremations SEVENTY-YEAR-OLD Shaktimani Chatterjee, was gasping for breath. Her oxygen level had dipped to 73. Her husband, also a Covid patient, dialed a doctor-friend, who, unable to help, reached out to the Red Volunteers (RV). In less than an hour, four boys were at their door with a 50 litre oxygen cylinder. Since that day, the elderly couple has been getting medicines, oxygen, home-cooked food and even someone to baby-sit their grand-daughter. In Bengal, there are countless examples like this one where timely intervention by the RV has either saved lives…

LAST YEAR, in a precautionary Covid test, all of Dr Sudhanshu’s family members tested positive for the virus. Sudhanshu himself was not tested, and as he got busy caring for them, he overlooked his own symptoms. As a result, by the time he was diagnosed, his oxygen levels had fallen, requiring longer treatment and causing more side effects than might have been expected. “That taught me a lesson,” he says, “that the earlier one begins treatment, the better.” He says this led him, toward the end of the first wave, to consider how he could help people access treatment at the earliest. When the second wave hit, he was ready. He launched a teleconsultation service to help those who were unable to get treatment at overburdened hospitals. He initially approached…

ON APRIL 8, WHEN AMIT SANYAL saw his oxygen levels falling, he dialed Gaurav Rai for help. Rai wasn’t a friend but Sanyal knew the person they call Patna’s ‘Oxygen Man’ was his best hope. The next day, even as Sanyal’s oxygen level plummeted below 90, Rai walked in with a cylinder. “He entered my room without any fear about getting infected, fixed me with a mask and a 10-litre cylinder and also gave me a pep talk,” Sanyal recalls. A day later, Rai delivered a cylinder for Sanyal’s mother who was also Covid-infected. Sanyal says he owes his life to Rai’s timely help. Rai, 51, is general manager at a company in the Bihar capital that manufactures high-security number plates. Gaurav discovered the philanthropist in himself last July after…

ATE EVENING OF MAY 16, a few volunteers of Sewa International were busy at their office in New Delhi’s Deen Dayal Upadhyay Marg loading 100 oxygen concentrators into a truck. The consignment was on its way to Nagpur in Maharashtra. At the Nagpur nodal centre, the volunteers were ready with a list of Covid care centres and hospitals where these concentrators needed to go. Kumar Shubham, coordinator for Sewa International’s India unit, has already distributed 2,150 such concentrators to more than 240 centres across the country. In Houston, the US headquarters of the Hindu humanitarian outfit, 5,700 more of such concentrators have been procured and they are on the way. The outfit swung into action in mid-April after the second surge hit India. Along with concentrators, the group is distributing…

ON MAY 9, WHEN 84-YEAR-OLD Kamalakshmi, a resident of Kerala’s Meloor Village, tested positive and needed to reach the hospital, ambulances were unable to get to her home located 400 metres away from the road. The octogenarian had severe symptoms and needed immediate medical attention. Her Covid positive status deterred neighbours from helping her cover the distance from her home to the ambulance. As soon as word of Kamalakashmi’s situation reached Sathi Babu, the Palappally ward representative in the Meloor village panchayat, she visited the ailing woman along with her 27-year-old son Anil Babu. Soon after, Anil, clad in a PPE kit, was carrying Kamalakshmi to the ambulance. He accompanied her to the taluk hospital located eight kilometres away and post-treatment carried her back to her house. This is one…

BEFORE THE ONSET OF COVID-19, THE Bengaluru-based Akshaya Patra Foundation ran the world’s largest not-for-profit midday meal programme, reaching out to 1.8 million children from over 19,000 schools in 12 states and two Union territories. But as the pandemic ravaged the country and schools shut, it was time to change direction. With job losses, hunger and disease all around, the foundation decided to use its extensive resources for an equally challenging cause—Covid relief. “We quickly diverted our strategy from ‘food for education’ to ‘food for relief’,” says Shridhar Venkat, CEO, Akshaya Patra Foundation. The idea was to reach across to the needy in a three-pronged manner: distributing four cooked meals a day to Covid patients, migrant labourers, and the jobless; giving out ration kits that contained 42 meals for an…

“I DON’T CONSIDER THE PEOPLE I HELP AS STRANGERS. I AM SO HAPPY AND EAGER TO DO THIS WORK EVERY DAY, TO HELP HUMANITY SURVIVE THIS CRISIS—SATISH SAVITRI SARELLA, Founder, Future India Foundation” WHEN 38-YEAR-OLD SATISH SAVITRI SARELLA, a superintendent (vigilance) with the Andhra Pradesh animal husbandry department, tested positive for Covid-19 last year, he decided to send his wife and daughter to live with his in-laws till he had recovered. But a challenge awaited him in the kitchen. Weak from the disease and clueless in the kitchen, putting food on the table became a daily struggle. The experience sensitised Sarella to the difficulties Covid patients face in arranging nutritious meals, a key aspect of Covid management. “I realised that so many Covid patients recuperate in isolation or are senior…

THIS APRIL, AS MANJARI CHATURVEDI TESTED POSITIVE for Covid, several qawwali singers, tabla players, sitarists and stage technicians from the rural areas of Uttar Pradesh, Punjab and Rajasthan prayed hard for her quick recovery. Chaturvedi has earned the goodwill of over 150 families of artistes whom she has been supporting financially ever since the pandemic brought live concerts and music and dance performances to a halt. “ARTISTES ARE NOT JUST IMAGES ON POSTERS TO SHOWCASE INDIA TO THE WORLD. WE NEED A SUSTENANCE PLAN FOR THEM—MANJARI CHATURVEDI” “Most of them are not skilled and can’t take up any other work. They’ve spent their entire life playing music. Besides, there is no work available,” says the internationally acclaimed Kathak dancer. With pleas for help pouring in from musicians she had worked…

Though it put a brave face on its rejection by the people, the BJP is unlikely to forget its electoral humiliation in West Bengal in a hurry. The saffron camp first escalated the post-poll violence into an issue meriting President’s rule. But when it realised the move reeked of political vendetta, the party pulled out another old weapon in its arsenal—the Narada scam. It began with West Bengal governor Jagdeep Dhankhar acceding to the CBI’s (Central Bureau of Investigation) request to prosecute four Trinamool Congress (TMC) leaders on May 7. Strangely, the CBI had made the request sometime in January this year. The governor chose to respond to it three days before Mamata’s cabinet, which included two of the accused ministers, was to be sworn in. Ten days later, on…

Shivshankar Menon’s book is a complexly woven discourse on how India has seen itself, Asia and the great powers for the past 75 years. But this is no primer: Menon has spent his entire adult life studying China; he was ambassador there, as well as to Israel, Sri Lanka and Pakistan, and was Foreign Secretary and National Security Advisor. This experience, combined with a wide reading of extant literature, makes for a cerebral and deeply rigorous treatment. The first part of the book, roughly covering the period from decolonisation to globalisation, is more historical in its treatment and broadly follows a chronological framework. The second part looks at contemporary Asia and inevitably highlights China and its interface with others, in particular India. The focus is principally about India interacting, influencing…

“THE ENTIRE HEALTHCARE SYSTEM IS UNDER SEVERE STRESS. THE PANDEMIC CANNOT BE FOUGHT WITHOUT COMMUNITY SUPPORT”KAVITA SRIVASTAVA KAVITA SRIVASTAVA National secretary, PUCL, Rajasthan What she has done Helping Covid patients get medical assistance, oxygen and hospitalisation and providing food and water to those in extreme need DURING THE LOCKDOWN LAST YEAR, Kavita Srivastava, whose three decades of activism have won her the respect of the state government, was a leading voice demanding aid for migrant workers trapped in cities or forced to walk back to their home states. Since last month, she has found herself in a new role—using her contacts in government to arrange for hospital beds, medicines and oxygen for those in need, as well as overseeing the distribution of water, food and other resources gathered by her…

“TREATING PATIENTS OVER THE PHONE HELPS REDUCE THE LOAD ON THE SYSTEM. EACH PERSON CURED AT HOME IS ALSO A HOSPITAL BED SAVED FOR SOMEONE WHO REALLY NEEDS IT”DR S.N. BASNA DR S.N. BASNA , Deputy Medical Superintendent, LNJP Hospital What he has done Provided free teleconsultations to over 800 people since October last year AS A 13-YEAR-OLD in Sirsi village near Jaipur, Sri Narain Basna saw his sister die due to post-pregnancy complications because of tetanus. “She lost her life for the lack of an injection that cost one rupee. No one had guided her about it,” Basna, now the deputy medical superintendent at LNJP Hospital, Delhi’s largest Covid hospital, recalls in anguish. Years later, when he was a medical college student, Basna developed a steely resolve to reach…

THE VIRALS GROUP Lucknow What it has done Volunteers provide verified leads for medical resources in Lucknow ON MAY 9, Payal Yadav and her husband made over 50 calls to oxygen suppliers in Lucknow. They urgently needed an oxygen cylinder for Yadav’s 92-year-old mother, whose blood oxygen levels had slipped to 85. That day, they managed to find a 30 litre cylinder, but Yadav recalls the dread she felt when she realised their hunt for oxygen was far from over. “We were so sick and tired of making calls,” she says. “It was exhausting.” A neighbour recommended that she put out her request on a local WhatsApp group that had been helping people find medicine, oxygen and other Covid essentials in the city. It was called The Virals Group. Within…

LALIT KIRI’S STORY is a rags-to-riches tale of a pharmacist who made it big supplying logistical services to Cairn Energy while it was exploring for oil in Rajasthan’s Barmer, and continued to grow after that. Since the Covid-19 pandemic began, he had been urging the state government to use ‘container bunk houses’—shipping containers that are repurposed as rooms on construction sites—to set up makeshift Covid hospitals in areas without medical infrastructure. A few weeks ago, state revenue minister Harish Chaudhary sent Kiri an urgent request to set up a Covid care centre at Sambhara, near Pachpadra using these bunkhouses, giving him just 24 hours to do so. Despite the difficulty, Kiri managed to get the job done, putting a hundred people—including plumbers, electricians, landscapers and transporters—as well as equipment like…

“THE SIKHS ALWAYS COME TOGETHER TO SERVE… WE WANTED TO PRESERVE THAT SENTIMENT—MANJINDER SINGH SIRSA, President, DSGMC” THERE IS NO CHAOS or the smell of sickness inside the Sri Guru Tegh Bahadur Covid Care Centre, the hospital set up inside Gurudwara Rakabganj Sahib in central Delhi. It radiates order, control, empathy and calm. The facility, set up in 10 days and operational by May 7, now tends to around 70 patients. Each bed has an oxygen concentrator, meals planned by a dietician, and if intensive care is needed, the Delhi government has assured an ICU bed at the LNJP Hospital. The state government has also assigned 50 doctors and 24 nurses to the Covid care centre, who, along with 10 volunteers, tend to the patients arriving from all across the…

“WHEN I STARTED DOING THIS WORK, I REALISED THERE IS GREAT NEED FOR PEOPLE WHO WILL ACTUALLY GO OUT INTO THE FIELD AND HELP. I COULDN’T STOP THEN—VINAY PASRICHA, Founder, Dost” IN MID-APRIL, VINAY PASRICHA received a call from a friend’s wife who was desperate to find oxygen for her hospitalised husband. Pasricha, an alumni of Harvard Business School, spent the night finding oxygen for his friend which eventually saved his life. “Till that moment, I didn’t think such a thing was possible… to be in hospital and have no lifesaving oxygen,” he says. He started ‘Dost’ with 30 friends to provide medical resources to Covid patients in the Delhi-NCR area. “Instead of giving people numbers, we do the work for them. If someone needs a nebuliser, a medicine or…

EVERY MORNING, JITENDRA SHINDE, an autorickshaw driver in Kolhapur, Maharashtra, dons a full-body PPE suit, double mask, rubber gloves and a face shield before heading out for the day. It is not just because the city and the district named after it are literally the epicentre of the Covid-19 pandemic, but because at 3.4 per cent, Kolhapur’s Covid fatality rate (CFR) is more than double that of Maharashtra’s 1.3 per cent CFR. The city, a district capital with a census population of 789,000, is 374 kilometres south-east of Mumbai, close to Maharashtra’s border with Karnataka. Shinde transports as many as 15 Covid-19 patients each day to the city’s rapidly filling hospitals and has, till now, ferried over 1,000 patients. The 59-year-old, who offers this service free of cost, has been…

SRAVASTI GHOSH SPENT MUCH OF HER TIME IN APRIL helping Covid patients find hospital beds or oxygen cylinders and fetching medicines and groceries for them. But the shrill sirens of speeding ambulances at odd hours left her restless, and she felt guilty about not doing enough to ease the sufferings of people during the pandemic. That’s when, browsing through Facebook, she hit upon the idea of supplying nutritious food for free to those in need. Ghosh’s mother, Ajanta, advised her to work out the finances before taking the plunge. “But I was impatient and felt there was no time to waste as people were dying every hour,” says Ghosh, who works at the Kolkata Centre for Creativity, an arts organisation in the city, and is also into theatre and dance.…

IT IS 9.30 PM AND JATINDER SINGH SHUNTY is sitting in an ambulance in a parking lot in Jhilmil Colony, fielding calls asking him to pick up and cremate Covid victims’ bodies. “I’ve been living in this ambulance in the parking lot for 21 days now,” says the former BJP MLA, two-time councillor from East Delhi and part-time real estate agent. Since his entire family has Covid, he can’t go home and risk the infection. The ambulance is his bedroom as well as command centre. He also uses it instead of a car to move around in the city. “You never know when you may be asked to take someone to the hospital or pick up a Covid victim’s body,” he says. Shunty and 22 volunteers from the Shaheed Bhagat…

At the May 10 Congress Working Committee (CWC) meeting, party president Sonia Gandhi announced that the Central Election Authority (CEA) of the Congress was ready with the schedule for the presidential election. An earlier CWC meeting, on January 22, had set an end-June target to complete the process of electing the next party president. Accordingly, June 23 was fixed as the date for the election. But given the ongoing Covid wave, all CWC members unanimously favoured a further deferral at the May 10 meeting. K.C. Venugopal, Congress general secretary (organisation), clarified that the deferral would not extend beyond two or three months. Surprisingly, the resolution to postpone the election was initiated by CWC members from among the ‘Group of 23’ that had in August 2020 written to Sonia Gandhi demanding…

As India’s second wave of Covid cases began to surge in late February/ early March, policymakers and bankers were concerned that the lockdowns states were implementing to combat the virus could stoke inflation. As the data for WPI (wholesale price index) inflation—which tracks pre-retail prices of goods—flowed in, these concerns proved well-founded. In April this year, WPI inflation spiked to an 11-year high of 10.49 per cent, compared with the same month last year. It rose from 7.39 per cent in March, on the back of price increases in basic metals, power and fuel, the last two of which are at four-year highs. One reason for the high reading in April is the ‘low base effect’—in April last year, following the national lockdown imposed on March 25, WPI inflation had…

MEET GURPREET SINGH RUMMY. For a living, he works as a contractor supplying fuel pumps to petrol stations in the National Capital Region. But not during these troubled times. He and his friends are busy running an ‘Oxygen Langar’ 24x7 in a gurudwara in Ghaziabad. They set it up in the last week of April to help Covid-positive patients who needed medical oxygen desperately but were unable to get it, either from the market or in hospitals. With the state machinery overwhelmed by the crisis and unable to meet the needs of Covid patients in the NCR, Rummy and his band of do-gooders—who call themselves Khalsa Help International—stepped in to make a difference. Patients can choose between being admitted to the 25-bed makeshift hospital at the gurudwara or refilling oxygen…

MAASH Kasargod, Kerala What it has done The initiative has brought teachers into Covid-safety programmes IN NORTHERN KERALA, the colloquial Malayalam word for teacher is ‘maash’. As community educators, they are a widely respected demographic. In June 2020, Kasargod’s district collector Dr D. Sajith Babu, hoping to leverage this social capital to amplify the state government’s Covid-safety awareness and tracking programmes, reached out to high school teacher C.P. Vidya to head up a new initiative. Called MAASH, this project roped in the district’s teachers for the state’s IEC (information, education and communication) outreach efforts. Just a few months prior to that, Kasargod district had accounted for over a quarter of Kerala’s total Covid cases—178 of the state’s 505 cases in March 2020. “In March-April last year, the district saw a…

“WE CAN’T IMAGINE A WORLD WITHOUT COMPASSION. WHEN WE SEE SOMETHING BAD HAPPENING, IT AFFECTS US AND WE HAVE TO DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT”PRATIKA PRABHUNE THE CITIZENS’ WAR ROOM What it has done A collective of private citizens, it has helped Covid victims source oxygen cylinders and concentrators and get hospital beds WHEN THE SECOND WAVE of Covid-19 began choking medical infrastructure, leaving tens of thousands frantically looking for medical care and posting appeals for help on social media, a group of friends realised it was time to pitch in. Pratika E. Prabhune and 16 others began helping by contacting suppliers to check on the availability of oxygen and medications and reaching out to those asking for help with the information they had gathered. The group named itself the Citizens’…

CALVARY TEMPLE Hyderabad What it has done Set up a Covid care centre on the church campus to provide free medical treatment ON CALVARY TEMPLE’S sprawling campus in Hafeezpet in west Hyderabad, next to its imposing church, a 300-bed Covid care centre has been set up for patients who cannot afford medical treatment elsewhere. With the help of staff from two hospitals in the city—Ankura and St Theresa—the centre admits patients from both Telugu states, providing round-the-clock Covid care. Brother P. Sathish Kumar, founder-head of the Calvary Temple, decided to develop the centre to ensure that those in extreme need would have some support. The facility has 50 oxygen beds and 250 non-oxygen beds, with treatment, medicines and food being provided free of cost. “For a daily wager like me,…

ON THE NIGHT OF APRIL 22, Gurpreet Singh Rummy, along with four fellow social workers, stood outside the Shri Guru Singh Sabha Gurudwara in Indirapuram, Ghaziabad, the streets around him a dystopian nightmare of death and helplessness. The 49-year-old president of Khalsa Help International (KHI), a social help group formed during the Covid lockdown in March 2020, was attempting to administer medical oxygen to a 55-year-old semi-conscious woman whose oxygen saturation level had dipped to 56 per cent. Reviving the woman not only meant they had saved a life, but also that they were one step ahead in putting into action an audacious plan to distribute free oxygen among Covid-19 patients right on the road. It was something they had been planning for a week after watching hospitals turn away…

LAST YEAR IN AUGUST, WHEN Tariq Ahmad Patloo, a houseboat owner in Srinagar, was infected with Covid and needed a ride to Srinagar’s SMHS Hospital, his own community failed him. He was unable to find a shikara to take him across the lake. Even after his recovery, the memory of that apathy haunted him more than the virus. Upon regaining his strength, Patloo began looking into the idea of starting a water ambulance service to help those Covid patients who are unable to find support. However, at above Rs 20 lakh, the cost of a commercial water ambulance—a motorised boat equipped with materials and devices to provide life-saving, immediate medical intervention—proved to be unaffordable for Patloo. So, instead, he converted a traditional shikara into a make-shift ambulance with financial assistance…

MUMBAI-BASED BUSINESSMAN M.K. NAVAS FORMED a group of like-minded individuals in April last year to help those impacted by Covid-19, but he had little idea that the initiative would get a resounding response. Within weeks, Care4Mumbai had people ready to offer money or their time to help those in need, all driven by a common purpose—that no one should go hungry. It was a tall task at first as the nationwide lockdown had crippled business activity in Mumbai for over a month and thrown people across sectors out of jobs. “We ensured that distressed individuals who reached out to us or whom we were alerted about by people or organisations did not go hungry,” says Priya M. Varghese, an IT professional who oversees Care4Mumbai’s relief work. The 60-strong group of…

EVERY DAY, AROUND MIDNIGHT, filmmaker Vaibhav Wagh steps into a different role. Donning a PPE suit, he volunteers at the Vaikunth Smashanbhumi in Pune’s Lokamanya Nagar locality. He notes the details of the deceased persons, stacks the wood on the funeral pyres and works a gruelling shift till eight the next morning, braving the searing heat of the blazing pyres in a stifling PPE suit. Though his nephews Chinmay and Vedant take over during the day, Vaibhav’s work continues as he collects the ashes and gives it to the next of kin who come for them the next day. When infections began surging in Pune in mid-April (the city was reporting daily infections of up to 10,000 by April 26), so did the number of daily deaths (139 on April…

WHEN HIS ONLY SON, 31-YEAR-OLD RAJIV LAL, died on April 21 at the King George’s Medical University (KGMU) in Lucknow, Bachchhulal, 65, had exhausted all his money on his treatment. He had first taken him to a private nursing home in Nanpara, Bahraich, where he lived. When Rajiv did not get better, he was referred to KGMU. Here, he was refused admission without an investigation report due to a suspected Covid infection. As the hapless father stood outside the hospital gate with his ailing son, a volunteer informed Suman Singh Rawat, who has been running Power Wings Foundation, a social service organisation, since July 2016 with a group of friends. Rawat managed to get Rajiv admission in the hospital but he passed away the next day. The Covid test result…