 For more videos on people's struggles, please subscribe to our YouTube channel. The COVID-19 crisis in India has surpassed all previous records of any country. India is reporting the highest number of cases and casualties than any other country has reported at any point in the pandemic. The number of cases being reported daily has remained above 300,000 for about a week now. A total of around 200,000 deaths have been reported so far in the Even this is almost definitely an underestimate. Meanwhile, the healthcare system has collapsed amid this deluge of infections. Reports are coming from different states all over the country of oxygen running out in hospitals, no hospital beds, no medicines and bodies piling up as families wait for their turn outside crematoriums which are operating 24-7 to cremate the rising number of deaths. In capital city Delhi the situation remains grim. Most hospitals are full to capacity and many have been refusing admission to patients amid depleting oxygen supplies. The situation is similar in Gujarat which was under Narendra Modi's governance for nearly 13 years before he became the prime minister. Currently as well, a Bharti Janta Party government is in power. The oft-cited neoliberal Gujarat model which was one of the main planks of Modi's electoral campaign has been an utter failure in face of this crisis. The number of cases and deaths being officially reported in Gujarat is much less than what crematoriums are stating. The state of Uttar Pradesh is well continues to undercount cases. It is also administered by a BJP government under Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath. While patients and their families crumble everywhere in search of oxygen and hospital beds, Adityanath has been falsely claiming in the media that all is well in the state. He went so far as to call for the National Security Act to be invoked against anyone contradicting this and for their property to be seized. Meanwhile, in West Bengal, the number of cases are steadily rising. A long, eight-faced election is still proceeding in the state. Until just a few days ago, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah were leading massive public rallies in the state without any kind of precautionary measures against the virus. Even then, the number of cases being reported in the country was breaking new records every day. Now, an army of dead volunteers belonging to left organizations have been on the streets assisting people as the state and central governments have again failed to respond to the fast-spreading disease in an adequate manner. How did India land up in this situation? It is now widely accepted that most deaths taking place today are not simply due to the virus but due to the lack of healthcare being made available on time and lack of government preparedness. Most of these deaths are preventable. The BJP government at the center led by Prime Minister Modi had in the beginning of this year started posting about defeating COVID-19. In his speech to the World Economic Forum's TAWOS Agenda on January 29th, Modi said, by managing COVID-19, India has saved the world from disaster. Because of this premature declaration of success, the health authorities led down their guard and so did the country's people. This was despite multiple warnings to the government of an inevitable second wave of the virus which went completely ignored. A massive Hindu religious festival, the Kumbh Mela, was held amid a sharp rise in cases. No physical distancing or protective measures were practiced as hundreds of thousands of people congregated together, closely huddled with no room to move. A very small proportion of those who attended this festival were tested and little to no efforts were made to trace and isolate these people as they went back to their homes carrying the virus with them. Even as the number of cases steadily increased, the central government made no efforts to scale up oxygen production and work out mechanisms for efficient distribution to hospitals. It was only eight months after the pandemic began that the central government started the process of building oxygen plants. Of the 162 plants that were commissioned, only 33 are functional today. Most state governments also did not install additional oxygen plants. In all of this, the response by the southern state of Kerala under the government of Communist party of India Marxist stands out. Kerala increased its oxygen production capacity so much so that it not only has enough oxygen for its own needs, it is also supplying oxygen to neighboring states. The well-developed public health system in the state has been treating people effectively and at no cost. Despite the high number of infections in the state, casualties remain low. Even now, the primary response of the BJP government has not been about containing the virus but about containing the damage caused to its image. At least 52 tweets which criticized the government's response to the crisis were censored after the government asked Twitter to take them down. Next, the government's ministry of external affairs went after the newspaper, the Australian, who criticized Modi and stating that he led India into a viral apocalypse. I can't breathe. The words that have come to represent the brutally racist state and police system in the United States are today being used across India in a different context as the virus continues to spread. The decline of this outbreak will not be as sharp as its rise and this wave is far from over. As state and central governments crumble to respond, there is no telling how many dead will be left behind.