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SINNAR, India: India is ready to dominate the world in cases of coronavirus, but from Maharashtra factories to the crowded markets of Kolkata, other people are back in paintings and eager for the pandemic for the festival season.
After a strict closure in March that left millions of others at the breaking point of famine, the government and citizens passed to the world’s most populous country at the time life deserves to pass.
Sonali Dange, for example, has two young daughters and an elderly mother-in-law to care for and was hospitalized this year in unbearable pain after contracting the coronavirus.
But after the lockdown depleted her relatives’ savings circle, the 29-year-old had to repaint in a factory where she earns 25,000 rupees ($340) a month.
“Now that I’m cured, I’m very afraid of the disease,” he told the AFP amid the roar of machines at the Nobel Hygiene factory in eastern Mumbai.
WORST SINCE 1947
The death rate shown by the pandemic was higher in richer countries with larger populations: the number of deaths in the United States is twice as high as in India, accounting for only a quarter of the population.
Poor countries have suffered much worse economic suffering, and the World Bank predicts that another 150 million people could fall into excessive poverty around the world.
Many young people in the world now running for their parents to make it to the end of the month, activists say, while thousands of women have been forced to marry.
In Varanasi, northern India, Sanchit, 12, no longer goes to school and collects tissues shed from bodies before cremation in the city’s ghats.
“In one day, I make about 50 rupees (70 cents),” the kid told the AFP.
The IMF expects India’s GDP to contract by 10. 3% this year, the biggest drop in any primary country, and the worst since independence in 1947.
DISASTER BLOCKADE
When India entered the lockout, it was a human catastrophe, leaving millions of others in the informal economy unemployed, without a penny and in destitution almost overnight.
No one needs to retract that,” said Gargi Mukherjee, 42, while shopping in Kolkata’s new shopping district, full of festival season sponsors, many face masks.
“To survive, other people have to faint and do their job. If you don’t win, you can’t feed your family,” he told the AFP.
Experts warn that the October-November season, when Hindus hold primary festivals such as Durga Puja, Dussehra and Diwali, can cause a strong build-up of infections as consumers invade markets to buy expensive parts at a discounted price.
“Of course the crown is to be feared, but what can I do?I can’t miss durga Puja’s moments,” said housewife Tiyas Bhattacharya Das, 25.
“Durga Puja comes once a year, so I can’t miss the thrill of shopping. “
HUNGRY OR VIRUS
Sunil Kumar Sinha, senior economist at Mumbai-based India Ratings and Research, said Indians face an election.
“People have to starve or threaten to get a virus that may or may not kill you,” he told AFP.
Indeed, India’s low mortality rate, about 1. 5% of its more than seven million cases, has surprised many who have warned that coronavirus will waste its overcrowded cities, betalked by poor sanitation and ruined public hospitals.
Even if a likely under-count is considered, it is clear that the nightmare situation of corpses crowded in the streets, as warned in the 1918 influenza pandemic, fortunately did not materialize.
“Join the BRAKE”
The unforeseen pardon gave Prime Minister Narendra Modi room for manoeuvre for a new blockade, with the human cost – and political burden – of some other higher impediment to seeing how the number of cases soared.
But Bhramar Mukherjee, an epidemiologist at the University of Michigan, warned that the government not only lets the virus run its course.
“To open up, you want to intensify the Array public aptitude measures. If it releases the brakes completely, the virus will also take off,” Mukherjee told the AFP.
Last month, the Indian Medical Association criticized Modi’s government for its “indifference” to frontline sacrifices in one of the world’s least funded health care systems.
“It turns out they’re useless, ” he said.
Back in Kolkata, the bookster Prem Prakash, 67, philosophical.
“We have to leave something for the fund,” he told the AFP.
“Fearing death too much is not a solution. When that happens, you settle for it gently. “