When East India breathed OXYGEN into India

Backward, poor, helpless and above else Bimaru. Sobriquets often used for an ancient land with rolling valleys and dense forests. Dependent upon the rich states of India for their very survival. The labour force spread all over India, working without a face, often just to ensure that their families survive back in the states of Jharkhand and Orissa.

The land of the Chota Nagpur plateau and of a thousand adivasi groups and its people who remain faceless while they build India with their bare hands is now saving India with its sustained supply of oxygen.

Towns like Bokaro began filling up tankers of 15,000 litres each and loading these trucks in the euphemistically called Oxygen Express.

Karnataka which provides employment to unknown numbers of migrants from these states received its first consignment of 120 tonnes from Tatanagar on 11^th May. Tankers are passe now, it is cryogenic containers which are being used, each with a capacity of 20 tonnes each and 6 such containers will surely aid Karnataka’s efforts in battling the pandemic.

In 6 days from April 19^th to April 26^th, 302 tonnes of oxygen was supplied by the steel townships of the eastern states and Vishakhapatnam. Towns like Raigarh in Chhattisgarh, Tatanagar and Bokaro in Jharkhand, Angul, Rourkela and Kalinganagar in Odisha and Durgapur in West Bengal form the bulk of the emergency oxygen support that is keeping India afloat. And the effect. From Mumbai to Nagpur to Lucknow to Bengaluru to Nashik to Delhi to Jabalpur, city after city have benefitted from these supplies in the past few weeks.

The towns sending oxygen to the rest of the nation are not resting. It is the shortage of containers and tankers that is perhaps unable to utilize the full potential of the oxygen being generated in these industrial towns. But the efficiency is increasing now. With over 5000 metric tonne of liquid oxygen already being supplied, reports of increased quota for transportation are trickling down, A record was created on 11^th May when around 831 MT of LMO was supplied through the oxygen expresses.