In India, Communists Are Leading the Fight Against COVID-19
India’s right-wing government has been criminally negligent in its management of the pandemic, with deadly results. But communists and their allies have stepped in to provide relief to tens of thousands of suffering people.
Red Volunteers distribute supplies to the public. (Red Volunteers / Facebook)
India’s experience of the COVID-19 pandemic has been especially severe, with the second wave assuming a truly apocalyptic scale. The people of the country — its working masses in particular — have been facing a double whammy, with an assault on their livelihoods as well as the public health catastrophe. Narendra Modi’s government has presided over a very poor vaccination program, prioritizing the profits of big business over the need to save lives.
The roots of the crisis do not lie in a malfunction of the state as such. In fact, India’s neoliberal state has been working in exactly the way it was designed to function. But in West Bengal, thousands of “Red Volunteers” who belong to organizations led by the Indian Left have sought to compensate for the record of the state institutions. They have provided solidarity and mutual aid in an exemplary manner to satisfy the needs of the people for food and medical assistance.
State Failures
Modi’s government is dominated by the far-right Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, to which Modi himself belongs. It is so brazenly devoted to the interests of big business that it has exploited the pandemic to create new ways of maximizing profit. It has pushed through several pieces of legislation, including four labor codes and three farm laws, while also doling out tax rebates, interest-free loans, and bargain-basement privatizations of public assets to India’s business class.
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