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COVID-19 spreads to rural India, villages ill-equipped to fight it

COVID-19 spreads to rural India, villages ill-equipped to fight it

SHILPA JAMKHANDIKAR and TANVI MEHTA HOPES that India's rampaging second wave of COVID-19 is peaking were set back on Thursday as record daily infections and deaths were reported and as the virus spread from cities to villages that were poorly equipped to cope. Government modelling had forecast a peak by Wednesday in infections that have overwhelmed the healthcare system, with hospitals running out of beds and medical oxygen. A record 412,262 new cases and 3,980 deaths were reported over the past 24 hours, taking total infections past 21 million and the overall death toll to 230,168, Health Ministry data showed.…
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Pandemic pushes world’s biggest jobs programme to brink in rural India

Pandemic pushes world’s biggest jobs programme to brink in rural India

ROLI SRIVASTAVA  OMKAR Rathod was thankful for the company of hundreds of fellow migrant workers as they trudged home to far-flung villages once lockdown had shut Indian industry. But he didn't realise he would soon be competing with them for jobs. Back in his village in northern India since March, Rathod is vying for work under the world's largest jobs programmes: the only option for the millions of migrant workers who face mass job losses in a struggling economy and a raging pandemic. "If there were 15 people for a job earlier, now there are 200. Work for eight days…
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