As the South Asian diaspora continues to witness the horrific scenes of mass funeral pyres and overrun hospitals in India, many in the Bay Area and across the country are finding ways to contribute to ongoing relief efforts rooted in community-based organizations in India.
They’re pioneering creative ways of providing help and assistance, like cross-continental video chats for doctor’s visits. As the country’s official death toll nears 220,000, with many saying that is an undercount, the need to help is only mounting.
“It is totally surreal,” said Harish Ramadas, president of the San Francisco Bay Area chapter of Association for India’s Development, on the contrast between the ease of getting a vaccine in the Bay Area and the pain and suffering in many parts of India.
Ramadas said he and many fellow AID volunteers cope with the disconnect between their lives in the rapidly reopening Bay Area and horrors in India by volunteering and fundraising as much as possible, and using their privileged position to advocate on behalf of others.
AID is a mainly volunteer-run organization that has supported traditional development efforts in India for nearly 30 years. Ramadas said their focus is on grassroots partnerships, working in areas of social and environmental justice, health care, education and labor rights.
“We learn from them and the solutions that we help implement are all community-driven as opposed to a sort of top-down, paternalistic colonial approach,” Ramadas said. AID works directly with communities.
Shrinaath Chidambaram, who lives in Los Altos, is on the board of directors for AID. For him, it’s about more than the current news media cycle.
“I think first thing is for people to just go beyond the headlines and recognize that this is a multidimensional problem,” he said. “Hospital scenes and the crematorium scenes are heartbreaking, but there is a much bigger crisis yet to come,” Chidambaram said.