Virus Has Shown You Your Place—The Message from Global Media Coverage of Second Wave in India

In Lord Byron’s poem, ‘Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage’, the protagonist Harold, contemplating the grandness of the Colosseum, imagines the condemned gladiator, dignified yet forlorn, butchered for the entertainment of a boisterous, blood lusty Roman crowd out on a holiday. The silent and yet celebratory discourse on India, a country ravaged by the second wave, had one subliminal message: The virus has shown you your place; how could you even dream of doing better than the ‘civilised west’ in your response to the pandemic?” Raghu Rai argues that western photojournalists, in particular, are motivated to scrounge provocative pictures from India due to their particular appeal among international juries. India’s national spirit, however, is also defined by its boisterous democracy, which is a unique interplay of its assimilative community structures, assertive media, aware publics and vibrant polity. The story of service and sacrifice, of healthcare workers who laid down their lives at the altar of duty, of ordinary folk who gave up their life’s savings to help those in need, of neighbours who spent sleepless nights keeping vigil in their communities, of youth who volunteered to run errands for the sick, of the ordinary police official helping people struggling outside hospitals, and of just about any Indian with a smartphone who was part of one or the other social media COVID support group—this is the real story of India that also needs to be told, even if it cannot titillate audiences that seek a certain narrative from the dark despair of the developing world. Instead, a combination of editorial prejudice, regurgitation of stereotypes and irrational conflation of domestic debates with a vastly different Indian experience, not only diminished the discourse around India’s COVID response but also weaponised differences.