Patralekha Chatterjee | Inequity & privilege in the time of a pandemic

As India reels under a devastating second wave of Covid-19 infections, I hear people say that “we are all in this together, we are all equally affected”. This week, the high court issued a show cause notice to the Central government over the “non-compliance” of its order from last week to provide 700 metric tonnes of medical oxygen for the treatment of Covid-19 patients in Delhi. Or the grotesquely grandiose Central Vista redevelopment project continuing in the heart of the nation’s capital as part of “essential services” despite a petition in the courts arguing that the project was not an “essential service” and that it posed “a threat to the lives of the citizens of Delhi and beyond, including the lives of the workforce/labour engaged in the project”, and that the project construction could prove to be a Covid-19 “super-spreader”. Some privileges it flagged were: If you have health insurance, if your racial group has not been disproportionately affected by Covid-19, if you have easy access to private outdoor space, if you do not live alone, if you have not been quarantined from someone you live with, if you are below the age of 65, if you have not experienced an income/wage loss in the past two months, if you do not have a compromised immune system, if you have home access to high-speed Wi-Fi, if you have not felt unsafe because of your job in the past two months, if you have received professional counselling in the past two months, if no one you know personally has contracted and died from Covid-19, if you have not received food assistance in the past two months, if you have exercise equipment in your home, if you do not have someone in your home that needs adult supervision, if you have a pet. Even in these traumatic times, those of us who can work from home, for instance, are massively better positioned than Those of us who know someone who in turn knows someone else who is resourceful and whose voice is amplified in the social media have a far better chance of saving our loved ones than those whose have no connections.