India article here ♦ Tribute to Comrade Bai here ♦
“I might be dying but I want to see these profiteers buried alive”
INDIA, May 9— “On the one hand, hoarding, taking advantage of a vulnerable public, filling purses and hoarding life-giving necessities,” wrote a friend here. “On the other, humanity reaches out with open arms, helping, aiding, giving.”
A determined group of comrades in Delhi, who have fought the pogroms, joined rebellions in Shahin Bagh and farmers’ agitations in Punjab, and aided masses of migrant workers fleeing cities, jumped into action. Now every family has multiple members with coronavirus, and many are dying.
Oxygen has disappeared along with antiviral medications. Hospitals have stopped taking patients. Horrific scenes of patients gasping for air are everywhere.
The group of ICWP comrades has dwindled as family members have fallen seriously ill. However, the remaining comrades have stepped up. They immediately contacted comrades in the deep south who are also facing dire conditions.
Comrades created a poster entitled “Break the Chain” (referring to coronavirus) of Pandemic, Profit, War, Sexism, Casteism, Fascism. They asked workers to join the International Communist Workers’ Party, the only party that can break that chain with communist revolution. They appealed to the masses to read and organize Red Flag.
The back of the poster asked people not to panic. It showed basic technics to enhance oxygen levels. We practiced breathing technics with families. We also said that, when possible, we should seize oxygen tanks and make them available to people in need. We were encouraged by several Gurudwaras (temples) where Sikh families have started Oxygen Langar to share free oxygen with the masses. We discouraged people from going to the hospitals, which are completely overrun, and where they face ruthless police and hospital administrators. We provided comfort and support to many families we visit every day.
The response from our neighbors was overwhelming. To knock at a neighbor’s door who might be seriously ill or dying and offer them our leaflet was challenging and heart-warming. One neighbor said, in a barely audible voice, “I might be dying but I want to see these profiteers buried alive”. We spent quality time with the neighbors. Some people were inconsolable. We were there for them.
We always offered our poster and the literature. Our posters were becoming the life of the masses. Hopelessness turned into anger at the bosses. Fascist Modi and his RSS goons were the targets of their wrath. In our three collectives around India, we distributed, and we are continuing to distribute, our literature in several languages. It is all handwritten and mass-produced because we don’t have access to fancy equipment.
Our comrades and neighbors in Bengaluru gave a heartfelt message of support and solidarity to comrade Bai. This was just the beginning as more and more neighbors have perished.
This pandemic started with greedy capitalism and its need to eliminate laboratories around the world. Some thirty years ago, the US Food & Drug Administration closed its doors in China and Africa to monitor epidemics. Climate change and capitalist pressures created conditions for zoonotic diseases (virus jumping from animals to human).
This led to the initial failure to detect the virus in China. More importantly, world capitalist greed–including the US and China–prevented labs from isolating and stopping its spread in a timely manner. So Covid-19 turned into a full-blown pandemic. It is likely to be endemic for a prolonged period due to vaccine apartheid where the billionaires fight for their super-profits.
Once communism is established worldwide, there probably won’t be pandemics, as the masses will have a communist understanding of the science and the knowledge to control it from spiraling out of epidemics. Masses will eradicate superstition and religion. However, we will certainly face the challenges of pandemics until we destroy capitalism.
Whether pandemics or nuclear wars, our party must grow in numbers under adverse conditions. The resilience of our collectives in India illuminates what can be done on large scale. Our communist relations and collectives will grow as we fight to destroy capitalism now and create our communist future. We have our Red Flag and our collectives to guide us.
We need to end the bosses and their profit system so the masses can breathe. Communism is oxygen for the working class.
India, largest vaccine producer in the world, and one of the world’s major producers of medicines, is facing shortages and lacks adequate vaccines. The billionaire Adar Poonawalla, CEO of the Serum Institute of India, complained that he was “not making super profits.” Another billionaire, Devendra Jain, owns India’s largest oxygen plants. He is busy making a super profit while the masses die. Adding to the workers’ misery, the Gates foundation has a chokehold on intellectual property (IP) that prevents the production of vaccines. The Biden administration offered a phony IP waiver, only to renege with ‘text-based’ negotiations to make more profit while thousands die each day. The pandemic has thrown 230 million more people in India below the poverty level.
FAREWELL COMRADE BAI! COMMUNISM WILL PREVAIL!
BENGALURU (India), April 30— Gangabai, known by many as Bai, is no more. Bai came to Bengaluru from the faraway state of Bihar. She came to support her impoverished family some 20 years ago to work in the many garment shops of Bengaluru. People speak a different language in Bihar, they eat different food. But 20 years of living in Bengaluru changed her and changed people around her.
When she found that she was having difficulty breathing, every person in her neighborhood came to look after her. The caring and love she received had a lasting impression on her. As she was gasping for air, people gave her comfort, they felt what she was feeling. It put an indelible smile on her face in the time of her death and people cried for Bai. Quite a tribute to a frail woman who made Bengaluru her home, learned a different language and became part of the community.
Bai did not go to hospitals to face the ignominy of ruthless bosses denying her the oxygen, medication and to be humiliated. She chose to be with the comrades until the end. They gave her everything they had. Above all, they gave her dignity.
Her death tells us that profit making system that deprives the masses of life is running out of life itself. Her death tells us that the horrors of the profit system must be channeled into breaking wage slavery and smashing it to oblivion. Her death is carrying unprecedented anger, agony of the masses. Her death reminds us that those murderous crimes that capitalism inflicts on us will be neither forgiven nor forgotten. Her death is the beginning of a process of communist revolution.
Her funeral will be led by our comrades tomorrow on May 1st, 2021. Bai did not know her age. People in villages at that time didn’t record these events. We tearfully bid farewell to our fallen comrade and carry our message ever more strongly that communism must and will prevail.