The government of India, headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, is obliged to financially compensate the relatives of people who have died of COVID-19 in this country, according to an order of the Supreme Court of India published on Wednesday.
The National Disaster Management Authority, an office run by Modi himself, now has six weeks to outline the operating rules for payments to close relatives of those killed during the outbreak,
“The national authority failed to fulfill its legal duty,” a panel led by Judge Ashok Bhushan responded to a government argument that monetary compensation was only optional under the mandate of disaster management laws.
As well as increasing criticism of Modi’s management, this compensation may also pose a risk to India’s already damaged public finances. The country faced a deadly second wave of COVID-19 infections in April and May, forcing state governments to establish lockdowns.
The disaster response body will decide the amount of money to offer to affected families, after considering government priorities, the agency said.
About 400,000 people have died from COVID-19 in India since the start of the pandemic, making it the third country most mourned by the coronavirus, behind only the United States and Brazil, according to Johns University Hopkins.
However, several specialists have stated that the actual death toll in India, which has a poor health care system, could be much higher than those officially recorded.
Corpses in the Ganges
Perhaps the best example of the lack of an official tally that recognizes the true dimensions of the tragedy in India is what has happened in recent weeks in the sacred waters of the Ganges River.
During the months of April and May, cemeteries and crematoriums were overwhelmed by the extraordinary influx of deaths from COVID-19. At the worst moment, more than 4,000 deaths per day were registered from the disease.
Due to lack of space or resources, many families in North and East India have been forced to surrender the bodies of their loved ones to the waters of the Ganges River, considered sacred by Hindus.
Others chose to bury them in graves, just dug into the sandy banks of the great river, epithet of the mother goddess Ganga Ma, who gives and takes life, according to a report by the AFP agency.
But the arrival of the monsoon, accompanied by its torrential rains, caused flooding and dislodged the dead buried on its banks.
About 150 bodies turned up in the past three weeks and have been cremated, authorities in Allahabad, a major Hindu pilgrimage site in northern India’s Uttar Prdadesh state, told the French agency.
At the most critical point in the second wave of the epidemic, up to 600 bodies were summarily buried on the banks of the Ganges, according to the Allahabad authorities.
But some residents believe that number is underestimated and fear that new bodies will appear during the next floods.
Millions of Hindus traditionally flock to the Ganges to bathe and wash their sins or to perform funeral rites, which result in the cremation of the dead on its shores and then their ashes are scattered in the waters.
India is slowly leaving the tragedy of its second wave behind. The health authorities reported this Wednesday that it registered 817 deaths in the last 24 hours, the lowest figure since April and for the third consecutive day, the deaths are below the barrier of 1,000 per day.
The decline may be due to greater progress in the vaccination campaign in the Asian country.
With information from AFP and EFE
