'Rural parts of India have begun to see a surge in novel coronavirus infections, as millions of migrant workers returning from big cities and industrial hubs bring the virus home with them, according to data collected from seven Indian states. Officials said the spike in cases was a fresh challenge for the country’s health authorities, even as they struggle to check the outbreak in cities amid the easing of a months-long lockdown. Confirmed cases in India crossed the 200,000 mark on Wednesday. Some experts say that a peak remains weeks away...'
'India could find itself in an acute health crisis over the next few months and the direct cause of it will not be the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Hundreds of thousands of children might already have missed vital immunizations, shows a Mint analysis of the latest health ministry data. Thousands of adults may have missed potentially life-saving medical treatment as the novel coronavirus epidemic spread and a lockdown came into force.
'...Scroll.in spoke to farmers and farm workers across several states who said work has come to a standstill on the fields. While the government had announced an economic package in March, the relief has focused on the landed farmers. For the landless labourers, there has been no income over the last three weeks, forcing many to adopt drastic measures like reducing their food intake to cope up with the income loss. “According to the Socio-Economic and Caste Census of 2011, 51% of India’s rural population is landless,” said Rajendran Narayanan, Assistant Professor, Azim Premji University.
'Cashew nut harvesting (carried out between March and May) has come to a standstill across growing regions of Dakshina Kannada, Udupi, Uttara Kannada, and Shivamogga districts in Karnataka and other states with the enforcement of the nationwide lockdown to fight COVID-19. In addition to this, the closure of processing units and retail markets has resulted in the price crash for raw nuts. Currently, the raw nut prices (ex-farmgate) have crashed up to 45% to touch Rs 70 per kg from Rs 125 per kg during the last year’s season.
'Trimbak Appasaheb Fad, a grape farmer from Jalkotwadi in Osmanabad district in Maharashtra, is destroying his grape harvest for the season. Grown for the export market, the slightly sweet grapes with a thicker skin than what is available in the domestic market, is rotting in his fields. His entire crop standing on 30 acres is destroyed taking along with it the financial stability he had built around his business. “I have lost everything. I have become a pauper,” Fad told ThePrint...'
'On the first day of a three-week nationwide lockdown, Jan Swasthya Sahyog’s hospital, in Ganiyari village of Chhattisgarh’s Bilaspur district, remained largely empty. In a place like Ganiyari, an empty hospital does not mean that less people are ill; it means the ill are simply not getting medical care. At 8 pm on 24 March, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had announced a 21-day nationwide lockdown to curb the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic, effective from midnight.
'With his first speech on the coronavirus, Prime Minister Narendra Modi got us to scare evil spirits away by having people bang the hell out of their pots and pans. With his second, he scared the hell out of all of us. With not a word on how the public, particularly the poor, are to access food and other essentials in coming weeks, it sparked off a panic waiting to happen. The middle classes thronged the stores and markets – something not easy for the poor. Not for migrants leaving the cities for their villages. Not for small vendors, domestic help, agricultural labourers.
'Urban India is staring at a possible spike in food prices and scarcity of fruits and vegetables in the coming days, as transport curbs and pandemic fears open up a wide chasm between the farm and the fork. Major crop-growing states like Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Karnataka and Uttar Pradesh have imposed lockdowns or curfews in a desperate attempt to curb the spread of the novel coronavirus. Inter-state goods transport is at risk as well, as truck drivers are harassed at borders, and casual labourers who sort, grade and load harvests are in short supply.
'At a time when rural distress is rising, food inflation is on a high and the unemployment is the highest in the past four decades, the Narendra Modi-led government has hit where its hurts the poor most – it has slashed allocation for the rural job guarantee scheme – MGNREGA. The scheme was a kind of lifeline for the poorest among the rural population, who are bearing the worst brunt of the agrarian crisis.
'At least 10,349 people working in the farm sector ended their lives in 2018, accounting for 7.7% of the total number of suicides in the country which was 1,34,516, according to the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB). The 2018 figure is less in comparison to 2016 when 11,379 farmers killed themselves, according to the agency which is responsible for collecting and analysing crime data... The data of 2017 was not made public by the NCRB in its report released on Wednesday. According to the report, a vast majority of farmers who killed themselves were men...'
