Wing Commander Satyam Kushwaha (retd.); A Noteworthy Personality Who Saved Many Lives During the Covid Era

Heena Samant, Research Associate, VIF

Heena Samant, Research Associate, VIF
August 8 , 2024 Views: 1524 Comments: 0

COVID-19 knocked on the doors of the world in early 2020. It led to massive devastation and the loss of many lives and livelihood across the globe. In India, tens of millions of people were affected by the virus, and at least 1.5 million people died during the first wave of the pandemic. ^[1] The second wave began in March 2021 and stretched until June of that year.

It was more catastrophic then the first wave in the form of spiraling cases, reduced supplies of essential items required for treatments, and increased deaths, particularly in the young population. ^[2] There was chaos and confusion across the country, with many people unable to get basic medical facilities. Such tumultuous times also led to the emergence of many remarkable heroes who helped fight the war against the deadly virus with courage, determination, and resilience.

One such noteworthy personality is Wing Commander Satyam Kushwaha (Retd), whose will and courage to help people in need during the COVID period saved lives of many. A decorated Veteran Fighter Pilot, he served with distinction in the IAF for over 21 years, earning two awards for his pioneering contributions. ^[3] He is a former Defence Specialist from NSCS, a former Chief Geospatial Officer of the Ministry of Road Transport & Highways, an Entrepreneur in Quantum Secure Communications, an expert in Geo-spatial Intelligence and Space matters, has also been credited by the Indian Navy for helping save countless lives in the 2018 Kerala floods. ^[4] Much of the work to help the people during the deadly second wave of COVID-19 was done by a team lead by the Wing Commander through KRANTII (Knowledge Resources Analytics Networks Technology Innovation and Integration), an online think-tank founded by him, primarily to “discuss ideas of nation building”. ^[5]

KRANTII was started as a group in 2016 to invite views of the public, industry, and various policy makers to improve the quality of policies that are being made on the National Geo-spatial Policy front. ^[6] Now comprising of 119 Groups covering 63 verticals, the focus of KRANTII has been to “Make India Great” by synergizing the collaborative efforts of like-minded Indians with focus on nation building as well as strengthening national interest. ^[7] The KRANTII discussions are undertaken in an open multi-disciplinary environment, providing a 360 degree perspective on multi-dimensional issues. ^[8] KRANTII teams are agile, scalable and modular offering high degree of flexibility, versatility and scalability to enable rapid proactive response. ^[9] Availability of multi-sectoral niche skill sets with hundreds of years of collective domain experience, makes KRANTII a formidable force-multiplier group to bring focused outcomes across geographies. ^[10] This dynamic capability of KRANTII Ecosystem helped Wing Commander Satyam to bring to immediate effect, a committed team to deal with the devastating second wave of Covid-19 in the country by providing a helping hand to the covid affected families across the length and breadth of the country. ^[11]

KRANTII, during the second wave of Covid-19 in India, was joined by a large family of volunteers from all walks of life, ranging from retired Civil Services and Defence Officers to doctors, students, and professors. ^[12] 40 separate groups worked seamlessly round the clock under the KRANTII Ecosystem and took up responsibility for addressing different requirements such as medicines, hospital beds, ambulance, oxygen etc. The volunteer’s job was to find leads, validate them, keep in touch with the attendant of the patient and try as much as possible to provide timely help. ^[13] All requests were processed either through google forms or WhatsApp messages once the requests were received. ^[14] In total, KRANTII had 40 different WhatsApp groups to support Covid-19 emergency response effort. ^[15] Once the requests were received, they were tagged with a unique id and thereafter they were given to various Task Forces. ^[16] The volunteers also focused on providing blood and plasma. ^[17] They also had several SOS Operations Teams which comprised of a Mission Leader, a dedicated doctor and a volunteer person who went live on call with the attendant to monitor the patient as well as gave live updates to the SOS field teams for real-time dynamic response. ^[18] This unique SOS Team composition ensured that best decisions could be taken to save a patient in real-time, despite huge ground level uncertainties. ^[19] There was also a follow checkup with the patients and the families to see if all was well with them. ^[20] In many cases, if the affected family was not able to afford basic medical facilities like medicines or hospitals, KRANTII also aided them by linking them to other on-line support groups and agencies. ^[21] Additionally, the organization also distributed free rations and safety kits such as that of hand sanitizers, masks, medicines etc. to the needy families.^[22] In collaboration with the local bodies, KRANTII was involved in creating awareness, providing medical help, and ensuring maximum comfort to the affected families.^[23] While most of the request which the organization received were from the Delhi-NCR region, ^[24] requests were also received from other parts of the country as well such as Mumbai, Pune, Bengaluru, Chennai, Manipur, Chandigarh, Hyderabad, Nagpur, Imphal, Jammu etc. ^[25]

In one of his interviews, Wing Commander Kushwaha (Retd) said that during that phase, he had totally lost track of dates, days, and time. ^[26] He further added that he once went without sleep for more than 80 hours due to flooding of distress calls.^[27] The success of KRANTII team was primarily due to seamless, well-coordinated, round-the-clock, selfless efforts made by one and all. The bulk of ground work and coordination was undertaken by the 400 strong student volunteer force drawn from three Delhi Colleges (JDMC, Kalinidi, LSR) and RRU besides hundreds of other volunteers from across the country who worked without any breaks, even though some of them got infected themselves and also suffered personal tragedies. ^[28] Together, Team KRANTII was able to bring relief to more than 3500 people across India by assisting families with hospitalization, plasma, oxygen cylinders and concentrators. ^[29] Besides this, they were also able to save more than 500 lives with critically low SpO2 (<60 with some as low as <30). Such cases also included complex inter-state patient transfers, rural interventions as well as handling critical pregnant mothers to enable safe-delivery of babies. These voluntary contributions, help, courage, resilience to fight the tough times would not have been possible without a well-knit team, trained and motivated by selfless leaders whose main focus was to ensure to save maximum lives. ^[30]

Team KRANTII continues with its efforts to provide 24x7 Emergency Response which includes assisting the needy with Blood support and medical support under time-sensitive conditions.

Endnotes

(The paper is the author’s individual scholastic articulation. The author certifies that the article/paper is original in content, unpublished and it has not been submitted for publication/web upload elsewhere, and that the facts and figures quoted are duly referenced, as needed, and are believed to be correct). (The paper does not necessarily represent the organisational stance... More >>

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Endnotes

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