Chindia Alert: You’ll be Living in their World Very Soon
aims to alert you to the threats and opportunities that China and India present. China and India require serious attention; case of ‘hidden dragon and crouching tiger’.
Without this attention, governments, businesses and, indeed, individuals may find themselves at a great disadvantage sooner rather than later.
The POSTs (front webpages) are mainly 'cuttings' from reliable sources, updated continuously.
The PAGEs (see Tabs, above) attempt to make the information more meaningful by putting some structure to the information we have researched and assembled since 2006.
Image copyright ANIImage caption Millions of people across India have been stranded by the lockdown
The first train carrying migrant workers stranded by a nationwide lockdown in India has left the southern state of Telangana.
The 24-coach train, carrying 1,200 passengers, is travelling non-stop to eastern Jharkhand state.
Earlier this week, India said millions of people stranded by the lockdown can return to their home states.
The country has been in lockdown to curb the spread of coronavirus since 24 March.
However, the movement of people will be only possible through state government facilitation, which means people cannot attempt to cross state borders on their own.
This train is a “one-off special train” to transport the workers on the request of the Telangana state government, Rakesh Ch, the chief public relations officer of South-Central Railways, told the BBC.
The train left Lingampally, a suburb of the southern city of Hyderabad, early on Friday and is expected to reach Hatia in Jharkhand on Saturday.
Mr Rakesh said that adequate social distancing precautions had been taken and food was being served to the passengers.
Image copyright ANIImage caption Railways officials said that adequate social distancing precautions had been taken and food was being served to the passengers.
He said each carriage was carrying 54 passengers instead of its 72-seat capacity.
“The middle berth is not being used in the sleeper coaches and only two people are sitting in the general coaches,” Mr Rakesh said.
Before the train pulled out of the station, all the passengers were screened for fever and other symptoms.
They had all been employed at a construction site at the Indian Institute of Technology, a top engineering school, in Hyderabad city.
The workers had earlier protested at the site against the non-payment of wages by their contractor.
Senior official M Hanumantha Rao said the contractor was asked to pay their salaries and arrangement made to send them back home.
The journey was organised at “very short notice”, senior police official S Chandra Shekar Reddy told BBC Telugu.
“We screened them at the labour camp itself and transported them to the railway station in buses,” he said.
India’s migrant workers are the backbone of the big city economy, constructing houses, cooking food, serving in eateries, delivering takeaways, cutting hair in salons, making automobiles, plumbing toilets and delivering newspapers, among other things.
Image copyright ANIImage caption Before the train pulled out of the station, all the passengers were screened for fever and other symptoms.
Most of the country’s estimated 100 million migrant workers live in squalid conditions.
When industries shut down overnight, many of them feared they would starve.
For days, they walked – sometimes hundreds of kilometres – to reach their villages because bus and train services were shut down overnight. Several died trying to make the journey.
Some state governments tried to facilitate buses, but these were quickly overrun. Thousands of others have been placed in quarantine centres and relief camps.
A team of medical workers of Shandong Province attends a ceremony before leaving for the UK at Jinan Yaoqiang International Airport in Jinan, east China’s Shandong Province, March 28, 2020. A medical team of Shandong Province left for the UK to help fight against the COVID-19. (Xinhua/Guo Xulei)
BEIJING (Reuters) – A plane carrying 83 British and 27 foreign nationals flew out on Friday from China’s central city of Wuhan, the centre of a virus epidemic that has killed more than 200 people and infected more than 9,000, the British government said.
The civilian aircraft chartered by the Foreign Office left Wuhan at 9.45 a.m. (0145 GMT), the government said in a notice on its website.
It is due to arrive at 1 p.m. (1300 GMT) in Britain later on Friday, before continuing on to Spain, where the home countries of European Union citizens will take responsibility for the remaining passengers.
“We know how distressing the situation has been for those waiting to leave,” Britain’s Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said, according to the notice. “We have been working round the clock to clear the way for a safe departure.”
The flight had been expected to depart Wuhan on Thursday morning with around 150 British citizens and 50 non-British nationals, but its departure was blocked by Chinese officials.
The reasons for the delay by Chinese officials and the lower-than-expected number of passengers were not immediately clear.
The UK embassy in Beijing and the UK Foreign Office did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Some British citizens have spoken of being told they could not take family members with Chinese passports out of the city.
Those returning to Britain will be quarantined for 14 days at a National Health Service facility.
A British government spokesman said any citizens who were eligible for the flight would be given a seat but nationals already infected would not be allowed to leave Wuhan.
The U.S. government warned Americans not to travel to China as the death toll from the new coronavirus reached 213 on Friday and the World Health Organisation declared a global health emergency.
Image copyright ANI
Image copyright ANI
Image copyright ANI
CHINDIA ALERT: You'll be living in their world, very soon 