MEERUT, India — The men stood shoulder to shoulder in the blazing heat, their chests leaning against empty oxygen cylinders lodged in the dirt. They had come from all over to this makeshift oxygen tank-refilling center in a city 40 miles northeast of the Indian capital of New Delhi in
High-rise apartment towers are hotbeds of infections, whereas some slums are proving resilient after enduring the first wave of the virus last year.
India’s lack of preparation for the virus’ surge in March meant there was no increased production of oxygen in a country that
already lacked an adequate supply. The government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi has at times appeared more interested in silencing
hospital workers who reported oxygen shortages than in confronting the breadth of a disaster that now has infected more than 23 million people.
The death toll is rising faster than bodies can be cremated in some parts of India, leading to scores of dead found floating in the Ganges River.
May 12, 2021
NEW DELHI – When reporting on any mass tragedy, a basic rule of journalism is to be sensitive to the victims and those who are grieving. Western media, which double as the international media, usually observe this rule at home but discard it when reporting on disasters in non-Western societies.
The coverage of India’s devastating second wave of COVID-19 is a case in point. Western media have been filled with images of dead bodies and other graphic scenes that generally would not be shown following a similar disaster in a Western country. About half of global COVID-19 deaths have occurred in Europe and the United States alone, yet Western media have avoided presenting harrowing images from those settings.
Since he was a child, Santipada Gon Chaudhuri had sought ways to help India s rural poor, so when the electrical engineer was invited to visit a co-worker s home in the Himalayan village of Herma in the early 1980s, he saw his chance. I was appalled to see how local communities were living in darkness after sunset, remembered Chaudhuri, 71, who then worked for the government in the north-eastern state of Tripura. Some used kerosene lamps, but even kerosene was not always easy to get. Since I had both the skill and position to try and provide power to them, it made me act, he said.