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 11th 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 19th to April 26th,
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 11th May when around 831
MT of LMO was supplied through the oxygen expresses.
