‘We are witnessing a crime against humanity’: Arundhati Roy on India’s Covid catastrophe

The author explains the continuous deteriorating situation in India amid its second wave of COVID-19. It is the same India that survived the first wave miraculously with minimum possible human cost, but today the daily infection rate is more than three hundred thousand. The second wave of coronavirus has exposed the fragile medical infrastructure of India that spends only 1.3% of its Gross Domestic Product on its health care system. The main urban centers of India like Delhi and Mumbai are running out of oxygen, therefore it is not difficult to imagine the worsened situation in peripheral areas. Moreover, the response of Modi’s regime and its associates is still equipped with utmost stubbornness and obstinacy. The state of denial or media manipulation is the only escape plan for the central government to satisfy their inner selves while unable to bear the burden of hundreds and thousands of lives. The author concludes that the 1.3 billion Indian population cannot be isolated, and that the current statistics of COVID-19 in India is just the tip of the iceberg.