Akanksha Gupta
Service Designer | Beer Entrepreneur | Public Speaker | Architect
IxDD 2021: Europe
India’s infamous second Covid wave was a horror like no other.
Ordinary citizens from all walks of life used their “popular Indian – frugal mindset – jugaad” to
rescue their fellow men gasping for oxygen cylinders, hospital beds and rare medicines that had gone off the shelves overnight, in addition to arranging ambulances and plasma. Young Indians stepped into the breach, setting up apps to crowdsource aid, organising community led initiatives for counselling and telemedicine, delivering key supplies like oxygen, food, medicines, and using social media to direct resources to people in need. Instagram and Twitter, particularly, had become the unofficial disaster management agency of India.
The collapse of the healthcare system drove desperate Indians to think on their feet and come up with agile solutions. A big lesson on resilience, solidarity and the creative power of the desperate mind.
