India’s torment strikes too close
India needs canisters of lifesaving oxygen, not carbon dioxide from the heavy sighs other nations might heave on its behalf. It needs medical supplies, not salty tears of empathy. Financial aid, not just our thoughts and prayers. The Covid-19 resurgence in the world’s second most populous nation has become a horror show requiring far more than mere gestures of support.
Pitiably overwhelmed hospitals, funeral pyres, human anguish and anger have made for harrowing reports testifying to a truly rampant infection rate.
It’s the sort of imagery the world has feared since the pandemic first struck.
And for India the worst is yet to come. Though more than 300,000 are falling ill each day, the infection rate is projected to increase wildly in the coming month.
New Zealanders who see this as distant suffering, removed from our own lives, would do well to look around our own society.
India has the largest diaspora population in the world and the past census found 4.7 per cent of New Zealanders were of Indian heritage. Which means that for so many of us, India’s torments are desperately personal.
Given the reproach heaped upon the Modi government, there’s a temptation for outsiders to attribute much of the problem to political ineptitude and institutional inadequacy.
There’s certainly a dose of truth to that, but it’s not the whole story.
Beyond question the government made a wretched miscalculation after what, by February, had seemed the heartening success of its internal protection programme. Hospital rates were falling nicely and epidemiologists were purring at signs of widespread immunity.
But what, in hindsight, might have been treated as breathing space to better prepare for a revived challenge was instead a trigger for a self-defeating attempt to proceed too briskly back to the pleasures of normal life; socialising, travelling and gatherings of sometimes giddying size.
Even given the massive differences of scale and societal makeup, there’s a truly cautionary message for New Zealand in the folly of relaxing awareness of how emphatically things can turn bad.
That said, it would be unworthy to adopt too lofty a perspective of the failings within India, given that it has been such a valuable, central player in the global manufacture of vaccines.
Early this year the World Health Organisation was singing the nation’s praises. Director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus thanked India for the role being played in the global Covid-19 response. Only by acting together could countries stop the virus, he added.
This remains true. We delude ourselves if we think we can simply huddle in Antipodean safety for as long as it takes while the rest of the world sorts itself out.
Our fates intertwine. The more that Covid is vibrant around the world, the more vulnerable we all are to the sorts of new strains that challenge everyone’s vaccination regimes afresh.
New Zealand’s closest neighbours are generally doing pretty well, as are we. But when global cases in a single April week are close to the tally of reported cases for the first five months of the pandemic, we stand reminded that the vaccine rollouts, vital though they are, are far more than an end-of-story victory parade. They are a key part of a complex and continuing battle.
4.7 per cent of NZers are of Indian heritage. For many of us, India’s torments are desperately personal.