NEW YORK— Drenched in sweat underneath protective gear and a face mask, 47-year-old Kalicharan, a mortuary worker at a government hospital in Delhi, transferred seven bodies to the cremation ground in one shift recently. The burning funeral pyres left him feeling dizzy.

“I felt like I'll collapse any minute,” he said. “During this tough time, we are doing all the hard work when most people are sitting in the comfort of their homes. We could get sick, and our families will be the ones to suffer.”

Kalicharan and his wife each make $177 per month working for Deep Chand Bandhu Hospital and belong to the bottom of India’s socio-religious strata - Dalits, sometimes called untouchables. While greater access to education has made a dent in Dalits’ economic mobility over the past few decades, today India’s dirtiest, lowest-paying jobs still fall primarily on Dalits, including cremation, burials, garbage collection, street sweeping, creating leather from animal skin and manual scavenging, the unsafe manual removal of human poop from pits or sewers.  

The pandemic has exacerbated the discrimination and social isolation Dalits face. And while many Dalits are on the forefront of essential sanitation work, they are also struggling to survive. Even without contracting COVID-19, many Dalits say with irregular wages and employment uncertainty, they’re concerned about feeding their families.   

"I just want to be able to work so that I can feed my kids," Kalicharan said. He fears being laid off once the COVID-19 cases go down. At least 70-80 people[MC1]  in his hospital were laid off for a while right before the second wave of COVID-19 hit, he said.

"They had no money to pay rent or to buy groceries," Kalicharan said. "We are incapable of fighting the system… We can't fight the government.” 

Daily wage workers like Kalicharan are temporary workers, usually from poor households with low education and skills, and are compensated on a daily or monthly basis depending on the terms of agreement.

The Hindu caste system is one of the oldest forms of social stratification. Dalits are considered the lowest in this 3,000-year-old, deeply divisive social structure designed to serve those at the top. It divides the country's majority population, Hindus, into Brahmins, Kshatriyas, Vaishyas and the Shudras. Dalits are deemed lower than the Shudras and often depend on daily wage jobs.

Last week, India recorded its highest weekly COVID-19 infections till date at 2.7 million cases and more than 27,000 deaths. It’s the first time India's reported fatality rate crossed 1% of infections, now amid more than 250,000 total deaths. Over 19,000 deaths have been recorded in New Delhi. Experts, including journalists counting bodies at cremation grounds, agree that India’s death toll is likely much higher than official counts. According to the Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington, the death toll in India due to COVID-19 cases could reach a million by August.

Local and international health experts are criticizing the Narendra Modi-led government for failing to address a severe lack of supplies, including oxygen and vaccines, and prioritizing exporting vaccines rather than protecting Indians from the virus. So far, only 2% of the population has been vaccinated.

The Hindu-first Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government is also blamed for encouraging more than 1 million pilgrims to gather despite risks of spreading coronavirus and hosting large political rallies ahead of elections in West Bengal in March and early April.

Critics also accused the BJP of being more concerned about controlling information online than responding to the pandemic. Twitter cooperated to remove at least dozens of tweets that had criticized the government’s handling of the pandemic, and Instagram algorithms designed to shut down COVID-19 misinformation have resulted in some Indians’ accounts being disabled after sharing critical information about oxygen supplies or hospital bed availability.

More isolated than ever

In India's capital, New Delhi, one of the hotspots of COVID-19 infections, frontline Dalit workers feel more helpless and isolated than ever. Due to the nature of their work, they are further stigmatized and isolated as many friends and family members have distanced themselves from them for being frontline workers.  

When India’s COVID cases first started rising astronomically in April, 38-year-old Babita’s garbage collection work came to a halt, so she became a small shop owner. She raised $270 in seed money with the help of a local non-profit to open a shop in her home to sell small food items like biscuits, chips and candies.

But things took a turn for the worst when Babita's husband tested positive in the third week of April.

"I have never seen so much desperation ever in my life,” she said. For six days, she shuttled her husband from one hospital to another, seeking help. “Government hospitals said they didn't have oxygen. The cylinders that were available in the black market were going for at least $400. How could I have managed to pay this amount?”

India's spending on public healthcare forms about 1.26% of its GDP[MC2]  and gives greater responsibility to states to determine their own public healthcare infrastructure. While the poor receive deeply subsidized or free healthcare at government hospitals, it’s often overcrowded or inaccessible. Many Indians seek private hospital care, and some government schemes cover costs for the poor at private facilities, but access is unequal. 

“It's like this, if you have money, you'll get all the care you need, and if you don't, you are being treated like cattle,” Babita said.

Her husband passed away on April 24. Two days later, her blood pressure shot up, and she suffered from Bell's palsy, a temporary paralysis of the facial muscles. now the sole breadwinner of a family of three. 

“My husband used to help around in the neighborhood. But no one has shown up to help in any way,” she said. "There is a sense of fear among people since someone in my family has died of COVID-19.”

She fears that even if she opens her shop again, no one will show up.

Babita is also deeply unsatisfied with the government's response to the COVID crisis. She said none of the locally elected representatives offered support to her or many people who have suffered losses of their relatives in the community. 

"There is little help coming our way, none from the government,” she said. “Some volunteers from a nearby gurudwara are delivering food, and that's how so many families in my neighborhood are able to feed themselves.” 

The children in the community, including Babita’s daughter, are falling behind in school since most of them do not have the resources to complete their education remotely. 

Pravesh Chhachhar, 51, a teacher who has been working with kids from the Dalit community for nearly a decade, said the conditions are dire. After his private institute, Euro to Zenith, shut down last year due to the COVID-19 lockdowns, he started visiting a small group of students in December at a slum in northern Delhi so that they could continue some form of learning. 

"Their daily routine has been disrupted. Forget laptops. A majority of the kids don't even have access to phones to use online educational resources," Chhachhar explained.

He said these children are constantly being exposed to financial difficulties at home. There are very few resources organized for the Dalit community members. 

Wilson Bezwada, 55, National Convenor of Safai Karamchari Andolan, a non-profit that advocates for the rights of manual scavengers, weighed in on how the community members are coping. 

"More than the virus, they are more afraid of a lack of food grains and groceries because there is no cash flow and everything is closed," Bezwada said. "They tell me they can't go home empty-handed to their family members, and any food item that could be made available, pulses, oil, the flour, will do."  

There's also a lot of panic due to misinformation around COVID-19 among community members, Bezwada said. He is planning to start a toll-free helpline for people to call for any form of consultation and has two doctors willing to answer questions on the phone.

The number of Indians living in poverty, defined as earning less than $2 a day, is estimated to have increased by 75 million people to reach 9.7% of the population due to the pandemic recession, according to the Pew Research Center, while the middle class shrunk by one third. The rise in Indians living in poverty in 2020 accounts for 60% of the global increase in poverty.

Manmeet Sahni is an independent journalist from New Delhi based in New York. She writes about politics, human rights, inequality and social movements. Her bylines have appeared in Documented, The Article and others and she is an alumna of the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University.