Obviously it's absolutely traumatic and in some ways as the hours pass it actually gets
much worse and not better because the fact of it actually having been real sinks in.
To lose a father to Covid, whose last words to his daughter were, 'I'm choking please
give me treatment.'
I think it just haunts me.
Is there something else I could have done?
Could I have done it differently?
Even when we cremated him, even when we finally said goodbye, there was a fight at the cremation
ground, because there were more bodies than there was space, and eventually the police
had to be called in to organise what was happening.
It's an extremely traumatising time for me personally, but the reason I do think I still
have to find the courage to speak, is because as a journalist I've been so often on the
other side, speaking to families who've gone through what I have gone through.
But also James, because what I have gone through, crushing as it is to me personally, does not
even begin to describe what most Indians are going through.
My father could not live but he got the best medical attention, he got the best private
hospital, and it was still traumatic, I still had to fight for everything.
But crushed as I am, what's happening to thousands and thousands of Indians is much worse.
[Presenter] How is it working?
Is it literally that you need either money or you need to know somebody, to get someone
who's very ill into intensive care?
[Barkha] Frankly even money or knowing someone isn't really going to help much right now.
What's happened is that the hospital system is completely overrun and even when they have
beds, without an oxygenated bed, a bed is useless for a serious Covid patient.
Doctors are doing their best, health workers are doing their best, but they just do not
have the infrastructural support that they need to save lives.
I have met with families who have spent 12 hours on the road going in an ambulance from
hospital to hospital, and finally just giving up and going back home sometimes losing their
relatives on the street.
[Presenter] This is very important because we had a representative from the government,
spokesman for the BJP, on the program yesterday, who denied outright that people were dying
on the street.
[Barkha] That's absolutely not true.
What I mean is that there are people who leave their home to go to a hospital in whatever
mode of transport that they can manage.
It can be an ambulance if they can organise one.
It can be an auto rickshaw, it can be sometimes at the back of a motorcycle, and the hospital
won't take them in.
And there have been deaths.
I have personally chronicled the accounts of families where the death has taken place
en route to finding a hospital.
I have spoken to the families of these people myself personally.
[Presenter] Tell us about the crematorium.
You mentioned the difficulties in finding space there.
What does that tell you about the numbers and the official reporting of deaths?
[Barkha] After having travelled to at least four different states, the cremation grounds
are the only barometer of the gap between the official data and the number of people
who are actually dying, on the ground.
So when I walk into a cremation ground and an undertaker at a single site, let's say
in Surat in Gujarat which is a western state. When the undertakers at these single sites
tell me, 'today we cremated 100 bodies, today we created 130 bodies,' and the official data
for the entire state is less than what I'm finding at one site.
We know now that our casualty figures are not reflecting the actual deaths that are
taking place.
We need urgent death audits because at the very least I think that [what] our people
deserve is for at least our dead to be counted.
The last crematorium I was at where I cremated my father, I met the brother of someone whose
body was lying on the floor, and he said to me, 'I could neither give him dignity in life,'
because he couldn't get a hospital for him, 'nor can I give him dignity in death.'
There's enormous pressure on Indian journalists to stop telling stories from cremation grounds.
[Presenter] The failure to prepare for this second wave, the government told us it was
a sudden tsunami no one could have seen it coming, and that they're doing their very
best under impossible circumstances, what would you say to that?
[Barkha] I would say that there's finally some urgency in government response, but it
was not the urgency that we needed, expected and wanted, at least a month and a month and
a half ago.
And that critical loss of six weeks has cost untold lives.
So I'd list the failures as the following: Let's say the government genuinely believes
that the first wave had been fought successfully.
In 2020 this country had set up giant jumbo makeshift field hospital kind of facilities.
They were all dismantled.
What was the need to dismantle hospitals?
For some reason India calculated that the worst of Covid was behind it.
We even gifted away and exported vaccines to smaller countries, as you know.
Our vaccine rollout program was extremely late.
We lost two critical months in giving approvals to foreign-made vaccines.
In my father's case I keep thinking he'd had one jab.
If he'd had a second job maybe he'd have you know he would have had a better chance at
being alive today.
Why did we under-order vaccines?
Why have election rallies, the most egregious thing that I have seen as a journalist.
Mammoth political rallies carried on even till two days ago.
There were election rallies taking place for different elections in India.
How can you tell the citizens of this country to follow Covid-appropriate behaviour when
from the top down.
These election rallies and these religious congregations were allowed to take place.
And finally, how can our health minister, when our death rate, the official death rate,
which by the way I don't believe, was above 3,600 death, the health minister makes a tone-deaf
statement saying India is much better equipped to fight Covid than it was in 2020.
[Presenter] Is it hubris?
It's hubris, it's denial, it's insensitivity, it's mistakes, it's bureaucracy.
And there is that arrogance, maybe that there'll be no political price.
And as long as politicians believe that, they don't seem to change how they respond.
[Presenter] Just one final question Barkha.
Perhaps you could just tell us how you'll remember your father?
[Barkha] Oh thank you for asking me that, because I've tried very hard to erase the
image I have of him on a ventilator.
But my father was a man of science. He believed in tinkering with machines, he would sometimes
break little radio sets just to repair them, he was consumed by science, and he followed
every scientific development on Covid.
He was a feminist father, he set my sister and I free to follow our own paths and our passions.
He was kind and compassionate and handsome and ever-smiling, and I've never met anyone
who had a bad word to say about him.
And I know he'd be appalled to see his country doing some really strange things like abandon
scientific temperament, continue to privilege politics and religion over the saving of human
lives, and that is why all I can do today is to somehow find the courage to keep telling
this story. If not for anyone else's sake, but for what he would have wanted to do.