RAJIV GANDHI ONLUS

Ours is an association founded in 2003 which takes its name from the Center for the Disabled “ Rajiv Gandhi Home for Handicapped ” in Pondicherry – Tamil Nadu – India, which we have decided to support with small projects, as well as construction of the new house without architectural barriers. The center is an all-female reality with disabled women and girls with family problems and where about fifteen disabled women are still hosted, who are dedicated to the art of sewing and the production of incense. & Nbsp; Their enthusiasm and their will to live, despite their evident disability and daily difficulties, have involved us in an extraordinary adventure to say the least. In addition, some girls and boys live in the house who attend private schools with the teaching of the English language, which is essential for their future. The latter are supported with long distance adoptions from Italy by many friends of our association. Inside the house, on the second floor, there is a small kindergarten that houses about twenty children aged two to four, & nbsp; residents in the area, & nbsp; whose mothers work without being able to take care of them during the day. In addition to this symbolic project of the association, over the years we have been involved in supporting many small businesses, associations, and emergencies in Italy and abroad.

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COVID-19 IN INDIA

In India, the pandemic has hit the entire population hard, winning the third place in the world for absolute data after the United States and Brazil. It was the poorest people who paid the highest price, many of whom were left to die outside the hospitals that no longer had the space or resources to hospitalize them. Furthermore, the period has exposed the profound economic and social disparities: millions of migrants have had to leave the cities where they worked, due to the total closure, many of them fired or sent away, & nbsp; to set out along roads, highways and railways, in a desperate attempt to return home. & nbsp; The poor in the slums and the dispossessed remained where they were fighting without weapons with the virus that spread like wildfire, but the protagonists of this exodus were the people who until a moment before had a job in the city. Thousands of truck drivers were stuck on the highway without food or water, crops ready to be harvested slowly rotted. Already in February there was talk of an epidemic in India but the government had other things to think about (the visit of Don Trump, the elections of the assembly in New Delhi, the riots for the ferocious inequalities) and was able to show itself in all its shame, his insensitivity and indifference. It came too late in a society with enormous population densities and with the decision of a sudden lockdown announced by the government in the evening at eight starting from midnight of the same day, where everything would have stopped, the markets closed. They were also complicated days for the girls of our disabled center who found themselves with rationed food (what they had at home as there was no notice of closure) for fifteen days, consuming only one meal a day. The governments of the individual states have shown more heart and understanding: trade unions, private citizens and other collectives have distributed supplies. Subsequently, time slots were established in which to make purchases of food and then things went a little better.

Our student girls, who had a family, returned home, the others remained at the center together with the disabled women. The small kindergarten, set up on the first floor of the structure, remained closed. We continued to hear each other in real time via whatsapp and each time they reassured us about their state of health, closed in the house they felt protected. Currently, after thousands of deaths, the situation seemed to be painfully returning to a pseudo-normalcy with the opening of schools but a new wave is hitting the whole of India: schools closed again, a new lockdown, again people on the run, thousands of dead …. Our girls remained in the center and are safe.