Where relief falls short, groups of volunteers step in, plug gaps
HELPING HAND As Covid-19 spreads, an army of volunteers has come forward across India to aid vulnerable groups
KOLKATA/BENGALURU/GURUGRAM/ CHANDIGARH/BHUBANESWAR/HYDERABAD: Utpal Basumallik was on one of the last international flights to land in India, arriving in Kolkata on March 19 from New Jersey with a stopover in Abdu Dhabi, three days before India suspended all inbound flights to stop the spread of the coronavirus infection.
Basumallik, a 72-year-old diabetic, was taken to a quarantine facility and discharged nine days later with a certificate that bore the medical superintendent’s signature. None of this was harrowing for Basumallik who, together with some other senior citizens, made a video thanking the government for taking such good care of them.
It was only when he reached his four-storey building i n Bangur Avenue — where he was asked to spend the remaining five days of his quarantine — that his ordeal began. Basumallik didn’t have any supplies at home. Being under home quarantine, he couldn’t step out to buy them. And his neighbours didn’t even want him in the building.
“I was totally exhausted,” Basumallik recounted. He had just lugged two large suitcases up the stairs — he lives on the top floor and the building doesn’t have an elevator. “I called my daughter and after hearing my ordeal, she started crying.”
That same night, Pamul Joshi, a 32-year old marketing strategist, read about Basumallik’s experience on the Facebook page of a week-old volunteers group called Caremongers India, after Basumallik’s daughter put up a post on it seeking help.
A resident of Kankurgachi, around four kilometres from Bangur Avenue, Joshi dropped off supplies including vegetables, yogurt, a few groceries and water bottles at Basumallik’s apartment the following day.
“I call him everyday to check on how he’s doing so he doesn’t feel alone,” Joshi said.
As the coronavirus disease spreads, an army of volunteers in the form of groups like Caremongers has stepped up to come to the aid of people in need like Basumallik in a humanitarian endeavour supplementing the relief efforts of government institutions and established non-government organisations.
They are volunteering their time, energy and money to help those who are helpless in the face of the global pandemic that has infected over one million people worldwide.
On the crowdfunding platform Ketto, a microsite has come up only for Covid-19 campaigns. Over ₹3 crore has been raised since the first campaign was launched on March 6.
Caremongers’s founder, Bengaluru-based digital marketing professional Mahita Nagaraj, was running some errands on March 15 when she received a call from a friend in Birmingham, England, requesting her to deliver medicines to her elderly parents’ home in the city.
That’s when it struck Nagaraj, 38, that the pandemic sweeping the world would hit vulnerable sections like the elderly harder than the others. On March 17, she made a Facebook group, Caremongers India. The idea was simple: Not everyone would be able to run errands to buy supplies like groceries or medicines, so connect them to people who would be willing to help them do so.
“I can proudly say that there’s not one state or Union Territory in the country where a person hasn’t signed up as a volunteer,” said Nagaraj. The network has grown to over 10,000 volunteers, who have organised themselves into Whatsapp groups based on the states they are in. Each volunteer is given responsibility for two people in need, based on their locations.
A core team of eight, including Nagaraj, have divided up responsibilities among themselves: managing the requests being made on Facebook, answering the helpline, passing on requests to the relevant Whatsapp group, creating a database of vendors, and finally, managing requests with city coordinators appointed in each group.
“We’ve moved into a weekly schedule,” Nagaraj said. “We’re creating a database of people who need our help, and now our volunteers will call in on them once a week to find out their weekly requirements, groceries, essentials, medicines, purchase it on their behalf and make sure the delivery happens.”
The person availing of this service would be required to pay for the supplies. The idea, Nagaraj said, is to promote physical distancing, prevent panic buying and hoarding as well as ensure that volunteers don’t step out more than once a week, given the national lockdown.
On March 24, the Prime Minister announced a 21-day national lockdown that was to go into effect the following day, saying this was the only way to check the spread of Sars-cov-2, the virus that has infected over 1,000 people in India.
Even before the lockdown was announced, several states announced relief packages: Uttar Pradesh promised to pay Rs 1,000 each to 3.5 million labourers , and a month’s free household rations to 16 million construction workers; Kerala offered loans and advance payment of pension in its Rs 20,000 crore package; Delhi announced free rations to 7.2 million beneficiaries, among other things; Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu and Bihar also promised free rations to beneficiaries of welfare schemes.
Volunteers are trying to address the needs of communities that are not being met by the state.
Jatin Kumar, 23, is one of 200 Gurugram residents who signed up last week to volunteer for the Municipal Corporation of Gurugram, which has identified more than 50 spots in the city, such as in sectors 9, 37 and 56, where people are in need of food supplies or cooked food.
Kumar has been dropping off bundles comprising five kilograms of rice, one kilogram of lentils, a litre of oil, a kilogram of salt and sugar each, and 100 grams of turmeric, cumin and chilli powder, at the doorsteps of the needy since March .
Kumar, whose work in a United Kingdom-based firm starts only after 8pm, admits his parents are worried, but he is taking whatever precaution he can: he wears a face mask, he maintains a physical distance from everyone he meets, and he regularly sanitises his hands.
Intekhab Alam, 41, runs a mechanic’s shop in Dwarka’s Sector 7, and lives in Mohan Garden, a low income group neighbourhood in Uttam Nagar. On March 25, he and an associate began to collect money to buy food for other residents of his area, many of whom are daily wagers.
BERHAMPORE: A day after chief minister Mamata Banerjee exempted the state’s beedi industry from lockdown, saying it was question of livelihood for millions, nothing changed in Murshidabad district, Bengal’s biggest beedi-making hub.
The ongoing 21-day lockdown has hurt the 1.5 million people in the district who depend, directly or indirectly, on the bidi industry. They have been living off their savings, and food provided by the state and non-government organisations.
In certain pockets of Murshidabad, entire families depend on beedi making. Workers are paid Rs 152 for every thousand beedis they roll. The raw material are supplied by factory owners through ‘munshsis’ (agents). The munshsis also collect the beedis. There are around 100 factories in the district’s Jangipur sub-division alone.
On Wednesday, the munshsis were nowhere to be seen, said beedi makers who were enthused by Banerjee’s announcement.
Anwar Hussain, a beedi maker at Uttar Chachonda village said: “We thought things would change after the chief minister’s announcement. But today we came to know that production will not start. I don’t know how I will run my family.”
Approximately 2.2 million peo