Indian diaspora struggles to help a homeland in COVID crisis

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This was published 2 years ago

Indian diaspora struggles to help a homeland in COVID crisis

By Todd Gillespie and Kartikay Mehrotra

Jaspreet Rai is desperately trying to do her part for the country she left more than 30 years ago: help its people breathe.

An employee inside an oxygen filling centre in Bengaluru, India.

An employee inside an oxygen filling centre in Bengaluru, India. Credit: Getty Images

Rai, 53, who moved to Endicott, New York - the birthplace of IBM - from Punjab, in India, is the founder of Sanrai International, a provider of oxygen concentrators. With India now the epicentre of the pandemic, counting about 3500 COVID-19 deaths daily, and oxygen supplies running out, Rai has rushed to help her former homeland cope with its worst crisis in recent history.

“This is probably the hardest time they’re going through,” Rai says of her 100-strong staff on the ground, who will supply 30,000 units across India in May, several times the 1500 Sanrai normally provides in a year. “When you don’t have equipment, and you’re trying to hold people, and they’re gasping, literally gasping for air. And you’re like, look, I’ve sold my last unit, I have to wait until the next stock comes in.”

Like Rai, millions of Indians spread across the globe - one of the world’s largest diasporas - are trying to do what they can to help their country of origin as heart-wrenching images of people lining up for oxygen cylinders, waiting outside hospitals for a bed or huddling around funeral pyres flash across their screens. Some have been unable to do anything to save family members who have succumbed to the disease.

Feeling Helpless

They are collecting funds, lobbying governments in countries where they reside and making pledges to shuttle essential supplies and equipment. But the scale of the task is leaving many feeling helpless as the health-care infrastructure in the world’s second-most populous country teeters on the brink of collapse.

“They need doctors and hospitals,” says Venktesh Shukla, general partner at Monta Vista Capital in Silicon Valley. “I’ve been struggling for the last three to four days to figure out what to do. Like a lot of Indians, we want to do something. We just can’t find a short-term solution to help.”

In spite of that frustration, the need to “do something” in the face of the unfolding tragedy is spurring many into action.

Little did Sudhir Ravi know he would be embarking on a humanitarian mission when the Chicago-based private equity boutique TJM Capital Partners, where he is an operating partner, bought the largest US supplier of military-grade oxygen generators in a strategic acquisition in April.

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A COVID-19 patient sits inside a car and breathes with the help of oxygen provided by a Gurdwara, a Sikh house of worship, in Delhi, India.

A COVID-19 patient sits inside a car and breathes with the help of oxygen provided by a Gurdwara, a Sikh house of worship, in Delhi, India.Credit: AP

But with COVID raging, Ravi soon identified 11 industrial strength oxygen concentrators between the US and Germany that can be distributed to hospitals in India. The devices can offer oxygen to 50,000 people in the next six months.

For the last week, he and Raghu Gullapalli, a close contact and executive director at the LV Prasad Eye Institute in Hyderabad, have been frantically looking for ways to get them to India, requesting the services of Amazon and FedEx. A consortium of Indian philanthropists have committed to cover the $100,000 cost of shipment, and Ravi says they’re hoping to get the cargo in the air on May 5.

“Right now, time is measured in lives,” says Gullapalli.

Billionaire Action

Indian-born billionaires and executives are also piling in with help. Tech investor Vinod Khosla tweeted that he’s willing to send supplies by the “planeload”. Google, headed by Sundar Pichai, promised $18 million in cash assistance to victims’ families and medical equipment. Microsoft Corp, led by CEO Satya Nadella, pledged to draw on the company’s network to provide essential supplies.

In Britain, home to around 2 million Indians, aid has come from people like steel magnate Lakshmi Mittal and Karan Bilimoria, who helped draw support from companies as the first Indian head of the Confederation of British Industry.

Google CEO Sundar Picha promised $18 million in cash assistance to victims’ families and medical equipment in India.

Google CEO Sundar Picha promised $18 million in cash assistance to victims’ families and medical equipment in India.Credit: AP

“We are focused on getting this help that is desperately needed as quickly as possible,” says Bilimoria, whose company produces Cobra beer, a staple of Indian restaurants in Britain. Air Liquide SA, the French gas supplier that helps create the bubbles in Bilimoria’s beer, has pledged its oxygen production in India to support COVID patients.

Mittal’s Indian operations are providing 210 metric tonnes of liquid oxygen a day. “Helping the people of India means helping India, and that’s crucial for the entire world,” he says.

The charitable foundation of British-based billionaire brothers Mohsin and Zuber Issa, who bought supermarket chain Asda, donated 2.5 million pounds ($A4.5 million) to four hospitals in the western Indian state of Gujarat, from where their family hails.

Elderly people struggle in a queue at an entry gate of a COVID-19 vaccination centre in Mumbai.

Elderly people struggle in a queue at an entry gate of a COVID-19 vaccination centre in Mumbai.Credit: Bloomberg

Vaccine Woes

As life in Britain and the US edges ever closer to pre-pandemic normal, for Indians abroad worrying about family and friends, the unequal access to vaccines is becoming evident. Only 2 per cent of the people in India have been fully vaccinated compared with 30 per cent in the US and 21 per cent in Britain, according to the Bloomberg Vaccine Tracker.

Monta Vista’s Shukla says he and 60 other influential Indians lobbied to convince the Joe Biden administration to free up vaccine supplies and steroids. The US has decided to start shipping drugs like AstraZeneca’s vaccine and Remdesivir to India.

Yet for all that, there’s only so much even powerful Indians can do remotely as raw material and equipment shortages, freight delays and labour limits hamper efforts on the ground.

“There’s only so many oxygen concentrators available in the market,” says Jitesh Gadhia, a British politician and a trustee of the British Asian Trust who has helped lead the UK government’s response and engagement with suppliers. “I am concerned that so many people trying to buy a limited stock will just raise prices. What we need is more supply.”

And that won’t be easy. While in Endicott Rai is trying to find charter flights to get around bottlenecks to transport her oxygen concentrators to India from China, she says units her company can provide in a month “could probably just be used in one day.”

Rai, who started her company after her asthmatic grandmother died in 2008 needing oxygen, says she’s saddened by the continued fight in India over something as essential as the air one breathes.

“I couldn’t understand how something so basic as oxygen was so complicated,” she says. “And that question is what I’ve been trying to answer for the past 13 years.”

Bloomberg

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