A coronavirus testing site in Jammu, India, this week (Credit: Jaipal Singh, EPA, via Shutterstock).
After setting the global record for the world’s largest number of new COVID-19 cases in a single day, the Indian health care system has been buckling under an ongoing surge in cases. Over 85,000 confirmed cases were reported last Wednesday, followed by an average of 75,000 new cases per day since then. The South Asian nation of 1.3 billion has now reported 3.77 million total confirmed coronavirus cases since the beginning of the pandemic, including almost 800,000 active cases, and is on a trajectory to surpass Brazil for the second-highest number of cases worldwide. Over 66,000 Indians have died as a result of the disease thus far.
As a developing nation with the world’s second-largest population, every sector of India’s civil service and economy are severely impacted by the pandemic. Efforts to enforce lockdowns and social distancing measures have failed in India’s highly-congested cities, especially New Delhi and Mumbai, while over 40 million people have been internally displaced. As a result, the government has been gradually lifting lockdown requirements, which had constricted India’s faltering economy by almost 25 percent in the worst economic crisis since the nation’s independence from Britain in 1947. Already suffering from a high unemployment rate, India’s jobless ranks have skyrocketed to over 122 million.
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Beyond the obvious impacts to the economy and health care system, the residual effects of COVID-19 and the resulting lockdowns upon Indian society have been even more troubling. Reported cases of domestic abuse have spiked over 130%, reports Vipin, a local FAI field worker. The closure of schools puts children at much higher risk of abuse, forced labor and sex trafficking, which some experts estimate has risen by over 80% since the lockdowns began. Online pornography viewership has also increased 95% in the nation, as part of a global trend, while 61% of Indians report a degradation in their mental health since the beginning of the pandemic. Left untreated for most, India’s suicide rate has jumped over 100% as well. As social pressures increase, minority communities face higher risk of discrimination. India’s large migrant worker population routinely suffers harassment by police and government agencies. Christians are also targeted by the much larger Hindu and Muslim populations. The number of reported cases of Christian persecution have exceeded 300 in the last 6 months, including the brutal murder of a 14-year-old Christian boy by a mob in Malkangiri Distric, near a school run by one of FAI’s affiliated education ministries. Vipin described how the pandemic has increased the risk Christian persecution. “The government is not just in denial, but positively on the side of the assailants, it would seem. Lockdown measures due to [the] pandemic have only made it easier for the fanatic groups.”
We ask the global FAI family to continue in prayer for the people of India. We pray for the spread of COVID-19 to diminish, and for the heath care system and economy to recover. We pray for the recovery of the infected, and for those grieving the loss of loved ones. Most of all, we pray for native believers to be strengthened in their inner being by the One who is able to provide for every need according to His riches in glory, that they might endure all hardship, providing a brighter and more powerful witness to hundreds of millions lost in darkness. We pray for pestilence, persecution and plague to bring a harvest of souls in India.
Maranatha.
