Bill Gates, the world’s second-richest person, has committed $100 million through the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to aid global research and treatment of the coronavirus. Jack Ma, Alibaba founder and the second-richest person in China, has pledged $14 million from his foundation to help develop a coronavirus vaccine. This, apart, from the 500,000 testing kits and one million face masks that he has shipped to the US. Popstar Rihanna has donated $1.4 million towards the purchase of ventilators at a time when hospital ICUs in coronavirus affected countries are overflowing with patients.
While some of the world’s wealthiest are happy to lend a hand for the global cause, the silence from their Indian counterparts so far has been more than deafening. A number of them, on the other hand, have pledged support to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ‘Janta Curfew’ on Sunday.
A number of Twitter users have questioned the silence from India’s wealthy fraternities.
To put it in perspective, the combined total wealth of 63 Indian billionaires is higher than the total Union Budget of India for the fiscal year 2018-19 which was at Rs 24,42,200 crore.
According to a recent report by rights group Oxfam, India’s richest one per cent held more than four times the wealth held by 953 million people who make up for the bottom 70 per cent of the country’s population.
The total number of coronavirus positive cases in India currently stands at 271, with more than 40 patients confirmed on Saturday.
As the number of cases is spiking with every passing day, medical experts have even warned that India might have already entered stage 3–of community transmission. World over, economists and medical professionals have warned that Indian conditions are favourable for the coronavirus to spread like wildfire.
Currently, India has been able to check the rapid spread of the disease to date. However, it is to be noted that lack of adequate infrastructure in the country’s healthcare system might prove detrimental if the pandemic gets out of control.
The Central and state governments alone would not be able to pull off a battle in such a case and would expect the private sector to step up in such a scenario.