US vice-president Kamala Harris said on Friday the situation in India, which is battling a devastating second wave of Covid-19 cases, is “nothing short of heartbreaking” and America is “determined to help India in its hour of need”.
Harris, whose mother came from India, spoke of the situation in India for the first time after the Biden administration pledged assistance worth $100 million to help it fight the second wave of the epidemic. Planeloads of supplies that have already reached India include refillable oxygen cylinders, N95 masks and remdesivir.
The administration has also announced support for India and South Africa’s proposal at the World Trade Organization (WTO) to temporarily waive intellectual property rights to Covid-19 vaccines to ensure easy affordable access to them around the world, especially in developing countries.
“As many of you know, generations of my family come from India. My mother was born and raised in India, and I have family members who live in India today,” Harris said in a recorded video message played at a state department virtual event on US assistance and the role of the Indian diaspora.
Her late mother Shyamala Gopalan Harris was from and many of her relatives still live there, including “chithis”, as she called her aunts in Tamil in a speech in 2020. Father Donald Harris, who is estranged from the family, is from Jamaica.
She added: “The welfare of India is critically important to the United States. The surge of Covid-19 infections and deaths in India is nothing short of heartbreaking.”
The vice-president went on to provide a timeline of how the Bien administration came to announce the assistance, starting with a phone call between President Joe Biden and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on April 26, a Monday. “By Friday, April 30,” Harris said, “military members from the United States and civilians were delivering relief on the ground”.
Harris is the first woman, African American, Asian-descent and Indian-descent vice president of the United States and shares an extremely close working relationship with the president, who has made sure, by his own admission, Harris is the last person to leave the room on all big issues; as Biden himself was as vice president to President Barack Obama.
Vice-president Harris went on to give a detailed account of the assistance the United States is sending to India, adding, in most instance, with “more to come”.
Harris noted, at some length, the US support to India and South Africa’s waiver proposal announced on Wednesday, which has been applauded as a “monumental moment” and “bold decision”. “We have announced our full support for suspending patents on Covid-19 vaccines to help India and other nations vaccinate their people, more quickly.”
As President Biden has noted several times before, Harris, recounted India’s help to the US. “At the beginning of the pandemic, when our hospital beds were stretched India sent assistance. And today, we are determined to help India, in its hour of need.”
She added: “We do this as friends of India, as members of the Asian quad. And as part of a global community. I believe that if we continue to work together across nations and sectors. We will all get through this together.”
Diaspora participants at the event were MR Rangaswami, founder and chair of the board of Indiaspora; Lata Krishnan, founder and co-chair of the board of the American Indian Foundation; Gunisha Kaur, an anesthesiologist who is a member of several Sikh organisations; and Ghazala Hashmi, a state senator from Virginia.
