Now hunger stalks India as country’s Covid crisis deepens

27.04.2021
Now hunger stalks India as country’s Covid crisis deepens - Похоронный портал

A wider disaster is building, one that – if left unchecked – could start to engulf large parts of the country


                      Relatives wearing personal protective equipment attend the funeral of a man, who died from the coronavirus disease at a crematorium in New Delhi


Relatives wear full PPE at the funeral of a man who died from Covid-19 in New Delhi


ByJoe Wallen


After almost two weeks of lockdown in Mumbai, the knock on my apartment door was unexpected.

I entered the corridor with slight trepidation, presuming there was either an emergency in one of my neighbours’ flats or it was officials from the local authority with the news my block was being sealed due to the escalating number of Covid cases inside.

Instead, to my surprise, a woman – elderly and frail – stood in the dark corridor. She wore a  brightly coloured orange hijab pulled tight around her face. A shivering arm was outstretched.

My Hindi is limited but there was no mistaking her plea. She pointed to her stomach and then her mouth. Like many thousands of others here in what was, until recently, one of the world’s fastest growing economies she was desperately hungry.


Dead bodies wrapped in protective cover of patients who died of the Covid-19 coronavirus disease are kept on the ground waiting to be cremated at a crematorium


Bodies of Covid-19 victims are kept on the ground waiting to be cremated in New Delhi CREDIT: Getty Images


Over the last few weeks, living in India has become more than a little terrifying. The country reported a record breaking 332,730 Covid infections over the last 24 hours, the health system has become completely overwhelmed and plenty of people my age are dying.

Fatalities are reported at over 2,000 a day but some put the real number at closer to 20,000. TV images show makeshift pyres being set up on patches of waste land here in Mumbai and also in the capital Delhi.

“Get out of India, Joe, just go anywhere else that you can,” one doctor in a private hospital in Delhi told me on Wednesday. “If you test positive, there is realistically nothing that we could do.”

The focus has naturally been on the sickening drama of the health system’s collapse; the shortage of drugs, ventilators and oxygen. Uncounted thousands are dying outside hospitals and in their homes.

Unable to keep up with the soaring number of deaths, mass cremations are taking place in parking lots and others are having to keep the bodies of their loved ones in their homes.

But beneath the headlines a wider hunger crisis is building, one that if left unchecked could start to engulf large parts of the country. Approximately 90 per cent of India’s 500 million-strong workforce are employed informally, living hand to mouth, day to to day.

A draconian two-month lockdown from March to June last year pushed an estimated 400 million Indians into further poverty and resulted in around 32 million Indians dropping out of the country’s burgeoning middle-class.

Thousands of them – like the woman in front of me last night – are now going hungry. The latest surge in the virus means India’s informal workforce is once again on the brink.


A mass cremation of victims who died due to the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), is seen at a crematorium ground in New Delhi, India, April 22, 2021. Picture taken with a drone.


A mass cremation of Covid victims in New Delhi CREDIT: DANISH SIDDIQUI

“A bulk of the livelihoods in urban India depend on working on the streets and in the informal sector, whether in vending or doing a small job, like transporting goods,” says Professor Amita Bhide, Dean of School of Habitat Studies at Tata Institute of Social Sciences in Mumbai.

“People have not recovered financially from last year’s losses and again things are becoming very difficult.”

The evidence is everywhere. In just a five-minute journey to my nearest supermarket, I pass dozens of people looking for food. Over the last two weeks, the pavements have suddenly filled with newly unemployed workers and their families, hands outstretched, begging for crumbs and money.

Naushad Ansari, 25, who lost his job as a food delivery driver when Mumbai went into lockdown two weeks ago approaches me at the traffic lights: “I am on the streets begging because we hope the vehicle drivers will spare us some money. No one is giving us work and we have no other option. There are six of us eating just one meal of rice each day”, he explains.

Mr Ansari is not alone. Akshaya Patra, an NGO in Mumbai, said there has been a 50 per cent increase in people requesting food aid in the city since the latest lockdown began.

“Last year, there was first absolute confusion, then panic and pandemonium. In this second wave, there is acceptance but the conditions are grimmer,” added Rudrali Patil of the She and India Foundation, which works to support India’s internal migrant workers.



                                     


Ashoka Hotel to be used as COVID Health Centre
https://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/Delhi/ashoka-hotel-to-be-used-as-covid-health-centre/article344...


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