Indian diaspora reaches out amid a brutal second wave of Covid-19

Last week, Sharat Mathur was able to go for a walk in a Chicago park without a mask for the first time since the pandemic began. Instead of a sense of freedom, his return to relative normalcy was tinted with anguish. “I have relatives sick with Covid back home,” he says. “The news is full of videos of Indians dying without oxygen, without access to medical help.”

His spouse, Gayatri D Mathur, founded Soondra Foundation some years ago, which provides healthcare access through direct cash grants to the working poor in India during medical emergencies. “What we’re seeing in India right now is much worse than an emergency,” she says. “We just want to help.”

The couple is not alone. At a time when governments across the world are coming to India’s aid as it struggles with Covid-19’s brutal second wave, contributions of all sorts are pouring in from the Indian diaspora as well. While some, like Indian doctors in the US, are offering their services, others are amplifying SOS calls, organising donation drives and generating awareness. Here’s a sampler.   

Doctors in Diaspora by TYCIA Foundation has brought together over 150 Indian-origin medical professionals who are offering support and counselling to caregivers of Covid patients. Suvita, a UK non-profit that uses the “nudge theory” to promote vaccinations in Bihar and Maharashtra, is sending out SMS messages to about 300,000 families on Covid homecare, specifically proning. (Nudge theory proposes positive reinforcement and indirect suggestions as ways to influence behaviour and decision-making of people.)

“Our local team is also supporting a voluntary team to update information on hospital infrastructure, including hospital beds and oxygen cylinders,” says co-founder Varsha Venugopal.

Meanwhile Mathur’s Soondra Foundation is looking at innovative solutions to social distancing, preventive care and quarantining. “In Mumbai, even while we await permissions, one of our partners is looking for spaces within the slums where Covid positive patients can be safely isolated,” Mathur says. “For this, we’re hoping to tie up with room aggregators like Oyo and Treebo, hire resident doctors and provide basic oxygen facilities.” They are also talking with the Uttar Pradesh government to distribute readymade kits of Covid medicines through the state’s community and primary health Centres.

Like the Mathurs, many Indians abroad are working to create awareness about the nature of the crisis and the relief needed. In New York, Ambika Samarthya-Howard, communications lead at non-profit Global Integrity, initiated a ticketed online panel discussion on India’s Covid crisis on May 7. Even though the tickets were priced at $10, she managed to raise over $2,500 to send to two NGOs working on the ground in India. The panel discussion fleshed out the idea that perhaps such collective actions can actually help mitigate the effect of governance failure.

Several individuals and organisations are raising funds. Here are some examples: British Asian Trust’s campaign, Oxygen for India, has raised almost £2 million. According to their fundraising page on the online platform JustGiving, these funds will be used by their Indian partner Swasth to procure over 20,000 oxygen concentrators by May 15.

London-based author Sonia Faleiro (The Good Girls) is also raising funds through the campaign #ArtistsforIndia for the NGO Mission Oxygen. Every direct donor will receive a signed copy of books by participating authors, which include Salman Rushdie, Ali Smith, Jodi Picoult and Fatima Bhutto.

UK-based Khalsa Aid has worked overtime to donate everything from oxygen concentrators to logs for funeral pyres. The organisation sent 400 oxygen concentrators on two flights in the first week of May and are gearing up to send more. In Chicago, Mathur’s Soondra Foundation raised over $22,000 in merely a week through their ongoing fundraising campaign.

Significantly, most of these organisations are looking at longer term solutions as well. Soondra Foundation is trying to see how it can strengthen the resilience of India’s working poor in the coming years. Many like Khalsa Aid are funding the creation of new Covid treatment centres. All of them worry about the poor access to healthcare across much of rural India.

Observers believe that the extent of despair witnessed in India seems to have reminded Indians across the world about their affiliation to their motherland. “I look at the situation in India and I know that our contribution is not even a drop in the ocean,” Mathur says. “But at least we feel like we’re doing something.”