Article link:https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/4/12/india-thousands-join-hindu-festival-ritual-bath-as-covid-surges
In India, thousands gathered in Hindu for a festival ritual that takes place in the Ganges River. This ritual takes place in the city of Haridwar in Uttarakhand state. The meaning of the ritual is the idea of when the individual dips themselves in the Ganges River, the individual will be relieved/absolved from all their sins, and they will be delivered from the cycle of birth and death. “The Kumbh Mela – or pitcher festival, one of the most sacred pilgrimages in Hinduism – runs through April and comes during India’s worst pandemic surge, with a record daily tally of 168,912 COVID-19 infections reported.” Due to this gathering, and Covid-19 still remains to be a problem in India, the cases have skyrocketed due to the large gathering. The authorities have tried to step in with the situation, however the crowd was just too massive.
Why can this be concerning? With Covid-19 cases arising in India, having a large gathering does not help this whatsoever. In India, they are currently experiencing a shortage of vaccines, and a surplus of positive cases. Due to India being so behind, it is expected for India to be dealing with a lot more cases, and falling even more behind. How could this be concerning to other countries? Because of India being so behind from other countries the virus could form into new variants, and unfortunately could possibly spread. Another reason why this is detrimental to other countries is travelling. Because of a lot of travel bands uplifting, it is expected that individuals who joined the ritual could possibly travel to other countries/ and or interact with others traveling, spreading variants, and infecting many others. This in all is extremely for India as a whole and back tracks them from progressing to beat this virus.
This relates to class on the levels of analysis. On an individual level you have the people who participated in this ritual. On an interstate level you have India where this ritual has taken place and is experiencing many Covid-19 caseses, and due to this gathering the cases will rise. On a global level you could possibly have possible variants spreading to different countries in the world due to this large gathering.