Whoever succeeds, falls asleep in the evening with death in his eyes a New Delhi and surroundings. Hundreds of stacked wooden pyres burn, completely illegal, along the banks of the Yamuna that runs through the city. our Holocaust denounces the commentator Rini Khanna, in the country where they register over 2,800 deaths a day. There are images of relatives unconscious or with their hands on their faces, mangled. Many no longer even go out of their homes in search of help, they know that no one will help them: in hospitals the beds have been out of stock for days. Above all, there is a lack of oxygen: breathing has become a luxury, you die of suffocation.
Out of control
After five days in a row with 350,000 new cases a day India’s run-down health system in collapse. To stem a pandemic that is now out of control, the government yesterday suggested wearing a mask at home. And to think that until a few weeks ago many political leaders did not even put it in their oceanic rallies.
At the front
The confusion is such that even many wealthy people they can’t get medicine for loved ones. Some have suspended their lives to help out. Like the photographer Debahuti Chowdhury who is working as a volunteer in a hospital in Varanasi. I feel at the front – he says – we are witnessing an endless nightmare. Also in the Hindu sacred city, Shivam Sareen who was a tour guide now coordinates aid and asks for support from friends abroad.
Criticism and censorship
Appeals for medicines and oxygen flock to social networks, also invaded by harrowing videos of gasping patients lying on the street. Yesterday Prime Minister Modi, under attack for the management of the pandemic, has ordered social media to obscure critical posts, calling them attempts to create panic. The widespread suffering was joined by anger and indignation. It is easier for him to have tweets removed than to ensure oxygen supplies, argues Aftab Alam, professor of political science at the University of Delhi.
The oxygen trains
Among the things that are criticized by the government, the fact of having promoted pilgrimages and mass electoral demonstrations, the delays in the vaccination campaign, and above all of having denied the crisis until the end and therefore not having planned a timely and coordinated response. Only yesterday the Indian railways launched the Oxygen Express, to deliver the cylinders with oxygen to hospitals. India gasped and the ind nationalist premier asked for help out. After the outstretched hand of the President of the EU Commission von der Leyen and Chancellor Merkel, yesterday the phone call from presidente Joe Biden. And even archenemy Pakistan stepped forward.
April 26, 2021 (change April 26, 2021 | 22:42)
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