Singapore-based startup consultant Saurya Velagapudi hasn’t lived in India since he and his family were eight years old when he and his family emigrated for a new life in the United States.
But the 32-year-old says he is still closely associated with the country. That is why he promised to save his life to fund a rescue mission in India.
He recently lost an extended family to Covid, India. The personal tragedy also convinced him that he needed to intervene to help.
“It’s an inseparable bond,” he said, quoting from the famous Bollywood song that refers to the emotional connection that foreign Indians feel to their country of origin.
Velagapudi donates $ 5,000 a day until his savings are exhausted to various aid missions in India, including AID India.
“It’s okay to go bankrupt,” Veragapdi said. “People need to understand how dire the situation is.”
That sentiment prompted this week to receive tens of millions of dollars worth of aid from every corner of the world, primarily from the Indian diaspora.
“Each of us has a family.”
India’s most famous diaspora companies have pitched, including Google boss Sundar Pichai, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, and Silicon Valley investor and billionaire Vinod Khosla.
“We are receiving requests from all over India, mainly from Delhi, for oxygen, PPE, medicine, ventilators, everything that may be needed in hospitals now,” Singapore told the BBC. It was.
Gil is from India and is a British citizen. She added that help came from all quarters, as no one of Indian descent was touched on this.
“Everyone is broken heart. We all have a family there. We just want to find a way to help.”
Indian immigrants are one of the largest in the world, with approximately 20 million Indian immigrants spread around the world.
It is a close community, seeking better prospects elsewhere and maintaining strong current ties with countries left decades ago.
Step up
Devika Mehndiratta is an Indian economist living in Singapore. This week she had to deal with the deaths of two loved ones in an extended family returning to India.
She attributed the lack of plans of the Indian central government and its loose attitude to the seriousness of the second wave of rising Covid’s death.
“This is not just an increase in the number of cases,” she said. “It’s about people dying because of a lack of basic things like oxygen.”
She chose to focus the central government on gathering crowds at large rallies to win the West Bengal elections, and instead of paying attention to the danger signal in February as early as oxygen deficiency, Kumbh Mela He added that he closed his eyes to dangerous religious events such as Mela. At the hospital.
“People are literally left to protect themselves to stay alive, which is why the private sector had to step up.”
Indian Health Minister Defended the governmentSaid that the country has the lowest case fatality rate in the world and the oxygen supply is “sufficient”.
Private companies to rescue
Domestic companies based in India have sought help.
India’s leading private steel company, JSW Group, is reducing its factory steel production so that it can bypass the oxygen supply to patients.
In a statement to the BBC, the company said it was building a large Covid center around the plant in an emergency and JSW was laying a dedicated pipeline to supply oxygen directly to patients.
Other companies such as Tata Group, Reliance and Delivhery are also participating.
“Indian health care is very underfunded, which is a long-term and long-term problem,” Johns Hopkins University political scientist Pavisla Suryanarayan told the BBC.
Suryanarayan states that a collaborative global approach to the crisis in India is needed.
“This needs to be a global effort. If you let India pass this alone, the virus will come back and bite you.
“You can throw money into it, but you can’t build health abilities overnight.
“Finding enough oxygen and even increasing vaccine production will take weeks. Until then, India has a very dark day.”