The out-of-control COVID outbreak in India has devastated all parts of the population, but it has hit so-called “caste-oppressed” Indians the hardest. 

Indians who used to be called “Untouchables," now called the Dalit community, are often turned away from hospitals even if they have room because they’re thought to be “polluting," according to Thenmozhi Soundararajan. 

She is the Executive Director of Equality Labs, a Brooklyn-based organization formed to fight for the rights of Dalit people everywhere. She joined In Focus to talk about the particular plight of the caste-oppressed, who were the first to lose jobs because of the pandemic.

They can’t afford health care, even if the hospitals would care for them. They can’t afford vaccines and may be denied access to them. Of course, this is not unfamiliar. We’ve heard that poor communities and communities of color in the U.S. were hit hardest by the pandemic and often had the least access to health care. 

But Soundararajan pointed out that, in the middle of a pandemic that is projected to kill a million people in India by September, adding an almost complete exclusionary policy toward some of its own people dooms them to the most dire of outcomes. 

She talked about what Equality Labs is doing to try to help the caste-oppressed, joining with people on the ground in India to try to get them more than medical care, but the food and housing they desperately need.