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As India gasps for air, a government “still in denial”
According to Delhi-based journalist Barkha Dutt, while the Indian government has finally started to mobilize in response to the COVID crisis, there's still a lot of denial about the severity of the ourbreak. "Our Health Minister, for instance, made a statement in the last 24 hours saying that India is better equipped to fight COVID in 2021 than in 2020. That's simply rubbish. We had India's Solicitor General telling the Supreme Court that there is no oxygen deficit as of now. That's simply not true." In an interview on GZERO World, Dutt tells Ian Bremmer that only the connection between fellow Indians, helping each other when the government cannot, has been a salve.
Watch the episode: India's COVID calamity
How did India’s second COVID wave get so bad?
There have been well over 18 million confirmed cases of COVID in India, second now globally to only the United States. Hundreds of thousands of new infections daily and already more than 200,000 reported deaths—though experts say that number could be 5 or even 10 times higher. Epidemiologists fear the infection rate could be as high as half a million per day by August, with as many as a million dead. India, as one newspaper headline put it, is a ship adrift. So, how did this happen? What does this all mean for India, for Narendra Modi, and for the world?
Watch the episode: India's COVID calamity
India’s “Darwinian” COVID response: “Indians have been left to fend for themselves”
"It feels like citizens have been left to fend for themselves. It's almost sort of Darwinian. You have a sense of starring in your own worst science fiction survivor movie, where it's up to you if you survive," says Barkha Dutt, an Indian journalist who just lost her father to COVID and has tested positive for the virus herself. A year into the pandemic, India's government has not properly prepared its hospitals and health care workers, forcing desperate families to run from hospital to hospital looking for help, she tells Ian Bremmer in an interview on GZERO World.
Watch the episode: India's COVID calamity
Did “complacency” cause India’s COVID explosion?
In January 2021, after India got its vaccination program underway, Prime Minister Narendra Modi declared victory over "controlling corona" at the World Economic Forum. But within weeks, those words would come back to haunt him. Ian Bremmer asks Delhi-based journalist Barkha Dutt what she thinks went wrong. "I think the complacency set in because, as a percentage of infections, the fatalities seemed to be not as high as the rest of the world… but it doesn't explain to me why we should've got lulled into not needing contingencies." Their discussion about India's COVID crisis is featured on an episode of GZERO World, airing on US public television.
Watch the episode: India's COVID calamity
How one Indian-American couple raised over $500k to send oxygen equipment to Delhi
An Indian-American family in California decided to take action after acquaintances, friends, relatives and finally their own parents in Delhi became sick from COVID as the city was overwhelmed by the outbreak. In just a few days, they organized a massive logistical and fundraising effort to send critical oxygen equipment to Delhi. "We came across oxygen concentrators as one of the major needs in Delhi, as oxygen supplies were low, and agencies, hospitals, and nursing facilities were running out of oxygen and putting out SOS messages." The couple explains how they have partnered with SaveLIFE Foundation, an organization out of Delhi working directly with the local government. "India needs all the help that it can at this point in time."
For more information about this fundraising initiative, visit: https://covidreliefindia.com/updates/
Watch the episode of GZERO World with Ian Bremmer: India's COVID calamity
India’s COVID calamity
India's latest COVID explosion hits home as one Delhi-based journalist speaks with Ian Bremmer on GZERO World about her own father's death from the virus. Barkha Dutt has been reporting on the pandemic in India since it began, but nothing could prepare her for the catastrophic second wave that has hit her country in the last few weeks—and that has now shattered her own family. Would her father have survived if the oxygen tank in his ambulance had been working, or if the ambulance hadn't gotten stuck in Delhi traffic? She asks similar questions of her national government. Why was it caught so unprepared by this second wave, well over a year into the pandemic? Why has India, the largest vaccine manufacturer in the world, been so slow to vaccinate its own citizens? And how much of the blame falls at the feet of Prime Minister Narendra Modi?
The politics of COVID aid and compassion: India vs Brazil
While residents of wealthy countries are getting ready for hot vaxxed summer — COVID is still ravaging many low- and middle-income countries. The horrifying scenes coming out of India in recent weeks have gripped the world, causing governments and civil society to quickly mobilize and pledge support.
But on the other side of the globe, Brazil is also being pummeled by the pandemic — and has been for a year now. Yet thus far, the outpouring of aid and (solidarity) hasn't been as large.
What explains the global alarm at India's situation, and seeming passivity towards Brazil's plight? What are the politics of compassion?
Scope of the crises. Both India and Brazil are experiencing catastrophic outbreaks of disease. These countries have the two highest death rates in the world, recording 2,367 deaths (Brazil) and 3,571 (India) respectively on average over the past 7-days. (However, data coming out of India is vastly undercounted.)
Both are seeing a steady stream of new daily cases and deaths: Brazil and India recorded 28 new cases per 100,000 on average over the past week. But there's one big difference: while India's deterioration has been recent and swift, Brazil's crisis has been relentless over the past 12 months.
Global (in)action: While both Brazil and India are spiralling, the international response to India and Brazil has been vastly different.
For India, the Biden administration mobilized to deliver $100 million in emergency aid in mere days, and directed vaccine supplies to Indian drug manufacturers.
And while critics have pointed out that US aid to India is still too stingy, compare that to to Washington's tight-fisted approach to Brazil: despite repeated appeals for help from Brazilian officials, Washington has doled out just $19.7 million in pandemic-related aid over the past year, including less than $2 million for hard-hit Amazonian communities as they were literally fighting for breath. Similarly, Brussels has offered help to India, while remaining apathetic towards Brazil. (Germany recently sent 80 ventilators to the Amazonian city of Manaus.)
Why?
Politics is personal. One contributing factor is that Brazil's President Jair Bolsonaro has not cultivated much goodwill from the international community over the past few years. The brash populist has denied the severity of COVID, scuttled states' efforts to implement lockdowns, and sowed doubt about vaccines' efficacy. And his history of insulting world leaders hasn't helped: He amplified a social media post describing French President Emmanuel Macron's wife as "ugly," and questioned President Biden's electoral victory. Meanwhile, his own government has managed to insult Beijing (mocking Chinese-made vaccines and tweeting racist content about the origins of the pandemic) despite the fact that Brazil depends heavily on China — its largest trade partner — for vaccine supplies.
India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi, by contrast, has cut a different figure. Although he is a divisive leader who has made a series of recent blunders in handling the pandemic, he has not diminished the seriousness of COVID-19, and has maintained warm relations with governments whose help his country desperately needs. That approach appears to be working better than Bolsonaro's.
The power of the diaspora. At 18 million, India has the world's largest diaspora, 17 percent of whom live in the United States. As India's crisis spiraled, student groups and non-governmental organizations around the world quickly stepped in to raise funds. Indiaspora, a DC-based non-profit, announced that it had raised $1 million in just 48 hours. Meanwhile, GoFund said that 60,000 donors from 106 countries had contributed to India-related fundraisers since April 17.
While Brazil also has a sizable diaspora population, 450,000 of whom live in the US, its size pales next to India's. And there has been almost nothing comparable in terms of online fundraising.
Acute vs chronic disease. Since COVID exploded in December 2019, hotspots have come and gone. But Brazil's crisis has been more or less constant for a year now. COVID cases — and deaths — have continued to plague populous states like São Paulo and Minas Gerais. Many people around the world seem to have gotten used to things being very bad in Brazil.
India, on the other hand, seemed to have things under control as recently as March. The crisis appeared to come out of nowhere just as economies in Europe, North America and elsewhere were preparing to reopen. This created a sense of global panic and served as a call to action because no one is going back to normal until we all are.
At the moment, neither Brazil nor India is close to that.
What We're Watching: Colombians hit the streets, Indian state elections, Turkey locks down
Protests are back in Colombia: This week, tens of thousands of Colombians hit the streets of the country's big cities in the first major wave of street action since the late 2019 mass protests over inequality. The primary trigger for the current demonstrations was a major proposed tax increase. The government says the tax hike is necessary in order to give the state the resources it needs to pull Colombia out of the COVID-induced economic crisis, but critics say that some of its provisions — in particular services taxes — inflict too much of a burden on an already-suffering middle class. Protesters also highlighted other issues, such as the unchecked killing of social activists, broadening insecurity in the country, and frustration with the slow pace of the five-year old peace process. When GZERO Media spoke to prominent Colombian journalist Camila Zuluaga last year, she warned that pent-up grievances from before the pandemic would lead to a fresh "social explosion" this year. It looks like the fuse has been lit. The next major protest has been called for May 19.
Crucial state elections in COVID-devastated India: India is now the global epicenter of the coronavirus pandemic, with over 3,600 deaths recorded on Thursday alone. But that didn't stop Prime Minister Narendra Modi from urging millions of Indians to vote in-person in the final stage of a state election in West Bengal, a race with nationwide political implications: Modi's ruling BJP party thinks it has a shot at winning in West Bengal, which the BJP has never governed and is currently run by Mamata Banerjee, one of the PM's fiercest critics. However, Modi's flouting of COVID safety norms in order to secure a political win may have backfired: exit polls now show Banerjee is likely to stay in power despite the BJP's strong performance in recent voter surveys. If the numbers hold, it'll be a major blow to Modi, who has until now defied political gravity to maintain a high public approval rating despite his government's poor handling of the pandemic and other political crises. We'll be watching to see if the BJP receives further blowback from Indians if bodies keep piling up across the country.
As COVID crisis worsens, Turkey locks down: As many parts of Europe start to reopen after a relentless third wave of infection, Turkey is now entering a strict national lockdown for the first time since the pandemic began. Although the country was praised by the World Health Organization last fall for its containment efforts, the COVID crisis has exploded there in recent weeks, and it's now the worst in Europe: Turkey recorded a high of 60,000 daily infections in late April, 10 times more than in February. Critics say that President Recep Tayyip Erdogan lifted COVID restrictions too early, and that the vaccine rollout remains sluggish (because of vaccine shortages, second shots in Turkey are being given six-eight weeks after the first dose, rather than the advised 28 days). The highly contagious UK variant B.1.1.7 is the most dominant strain throughout Turkey, experts say, and reflects the fact that despite fast inoculation drives in countries like Israel, the US and the UK, the global health crisis is far from over. Turkey's lockdown measures will be in force until at least May 17, a massive blow for Turks wanting to spend Ramadan and Iftar meals with extended family and friends.