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.
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Image caption Passengers gathered outside Secundarabad station in Andhra Pradesh state
India has partially restored train services amid reports of chaos and overcrowding at some stations.
At least 145,000 people will travel in trains on Monday as the country starts to reopen after a prolonged lockdown.
Two hundred trains will now start operations – up from the existing 30 that are currently running.
But maintaining social distancing and cleanliness is proving to be a difficult task as huge crowds gathered outside some stations.
India’s mammoth railway network usually carries 25 million passengers every day.
The ministry of home affairs has issued specific guidelines for the smooth operation of train services. They say that all passengers will have to be screened, social distancing must be followed at the station and in trains and only passengers who have confirmed tickets will be allowed to travel.
Image caption Police struggled to enforce social distancing due to large crowds
But some stations reported chaotic scenes as officials struggled to enforce these guidelines. BBC Telugu reported that people were standing much too close to each other at Secunderabad railway station in the southern state of Telangana.
“Railway staff and police didn’t allow passengers to go inside the station until at least one hour before the scheduled departure, citing physical distancing measures. This led to some chaos outside the railway station as a large number of passengers had gathered and there was no physical distance maintained. Police later arrived and organised the queues,” BBC Telugu’s Sharath Behara says.
Reporting from Delhi, BBC Hindi’s Salman Ravi said strict social distancing was being followed when passengers boarded trains, and all of them wore masks.
Image caption Passengers waiting outside the train station in Delhi
“But the same was not observed at ticket booking counters. Many people who did not have tickets also turned up at the station and that caused crowding,” he added.
Train services came to a grinding halt when Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced the lockdown on 24 March to stop the spread of coronavirus.
This left millions of daily-wage workers stranded as they desperately tried to go back to their villages from cities. Many of them decided to walk long distances – in some cases more than 1,000 kilometres.
As pressure and criticism mounted, the government started running special trains to ferry migrants. Some 30 trains restarted on 12 May, since then there has been a consistent demand to reopen more routes.
Getting the train network going again is part of the government’s wider strategy to slowly reopen the economy. Millions have lost jobs and factories are struggling to reopen as demand is likely to be sluggish in the coming weeks.
SRINAGAR, India (Reuters) – Indian police have released a pigeon belonging to a Pakistani fisherman after a probe found that the bird, which had flown across the contentious border between the nuclear-armed nations, was not a spy, two officials said on Friday.
“The pigeon was set free yesterday (May 28) after nothing suspicious was found,” said Shailendra Mishra, a senior police official in Indian-administered Kashmir. It was unclear where the bird was released and whether it flew back to its owner.
The Pakistani owner of the pigeon had urged India to return his bird, which Indian villagers turned over to police after discovering it.
“It’s just an innocent bird,” Habibullah, the owner of the bird, who goes by just one name, told Reuters on Friday.
He rejected allegations that the numbers inscribed on a ring on the pigeon’s leg were codes meant for militant groups operating in the disputed region of Kashmir.
Habibullah, who lives in a village near the Kashmir border, one of the most militarised zones in the world, said the bird had participated in a pigeon racing contest and the digits on the bird’s leg were his mobile phone number.
The sport is especially popular in the border villages, said Yasir Khalid of the Shakar Garh Pigeon Club, adding such races are held in India too, and it is not unusual to lose a bird on either side. Owners identify their birds with stamps on the wings, paint and rings on the feet.
“We had to take the bird into our custody to probe if it was being using for spying,” a senior Indian border security officer said requesting anonymity, while explaining this was part of the drill given border sensitivities.
In 2016, a pigeon was taken into Indian custody after it was found with a note threatening Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Image copyright GETTY IMAGESImage caption India has more than 150,000 reported infections
On the face of it, things may not look bad.
Since the first case of coronavirus at the end of January, India has reported more than 150,000 Covid-19 infections. More than 4,000 people have died of the infection.
To put this in some context, as of 22 May, India’s testing positivity rate was around 4%, the death rate from the infection around 3% and the doubling rate of infection – or the amount of time it takes for the number of coronavirus cases to double – was 13 days. The recovery rate of infected patients was around 40%.
All this is markedly lower than in the countries badly hit by the pandemic.
Like elsewhere in the world, there are hotspots and clusters of infection.
More than 80% of the active cases are in five states – Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Delhi, Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh – and more than 60% of the cases in five cities, including Mumbai, Delhi and Ahmedabad, according to official data.
More than half of people who have died of the disease have been aged 60 and older and many have underlying conditions, hewing to the international data about elderly people being more vulnerable to the disease.
The more than two-month-long grinding lockdown, official data suggests, has prevented the loss of between 37,000 and 78,000 lives. A paper published in Harvard Data Science Review appears to support that – it shows an eight-week lockdown can prevent about two million cases and, at a 3% fatality rate, prevent some 60,000 deaths.
“Infection has remained limited to certain areas. This also gives us confidence to open up other areas. It is so far an urban disease,” says VK Paul, who heads the medical emergency management plan on Covid-19.
This is where such claims enter uncertain territory.
Image copyright GETTY IMAGESImage caption India has conducted some 180,000 tests so far
Infections are rising sharply, up from 536 cases on 25 March when the first phase of the world’s harshest lockdown was imposed. The growth of infections is outpacing growth in testing – tests have doubled since April but cases have leapt fourfold.
Epidemiologists say the increase in reported infections is possibly because of increased testing. India has been testing up to 100,000 samples a day in the past week. Testing criteria has been expanded to include asymptomatic contacts of positive patients.
Yet, India’s testing remains one of the lowest in the world per head of population – 2,198 tests per million people.
The bungled lockdown at the end of March triggered an exodus of millions of informal workers who lost their jobs in the cities and began returning home in droves, first on foot and then by train. Some four million workers have travelled by rail from cities to their villages in more than half a dozen states in the past three weeks.
There is mounting evidence that this has already led to the spread of infection from the cities to the villages. And with the messy easing of the lockdown earlier this month, there are growing fears of infections spreading further in the cities.
Rising infections and a still-low fatality rate possibly points to milder infection in a younger population and a large number of asymptomatic cases. The focus, says Amitabh Kant, CEO of the government think-tank NITI Aayog, should be “bringing down fatalities and improving the recovery rate”.
But if the infection rate continues to grow, “things are going to get pretty grim in a few weeks time,” a leading virologist told me.
Image copyright GETTY IMAGESImage caption Millions of workers have fled the cities and returned to their villages after the lockdown
Doctors in the capital, Delhi, and the western city of Mumbai tell me they are already seeing a steady surge in Covid-19 admissions and worry about a looming shortage of hospital beds, including in critical care.
When the infection peaks in July, as is expected, a spike in infections could easily lead to many avoidable deaths as hospitals run out of beds for, or delay treatment to, infected patients who need timely oxygen support and clinical care to recover.
“That is the real worry. A critical-care bed needs an oxygen line, a ventilator, doctors, nursing staff. Everything will be under pressure,” Dr Ravi Dosi, who is heading a Covid-19 ward at a hospital in Indore, told me. His 50-bed ICU is already full of patients battling the infection.
With the lockdown easing, doctors are feeling jittery. “It’s a tactical nightmare because some people have begun going to work but there is a lot of fear”, says Dr Dosi.
“One co-worker sneezed in the office and 10-15 of his colleagues panicked and came to the hospital and demanded they get tested. These are the pressures that are building up.”
One reason for the confusion is the lack of – or the opacity of – adequate data on the pandemic to help frame a strategic and granular response.
Most experts say a one-size-fits-all strategy to contain the pandemic and impose and lift lockdowns will not work in India where different states will see infection peaks at different times. The reported infection rate – the number of infections for every 100 tests – in Maharashtra state, for example, is three times the national average.
“The infection is not spreading uniformly. India will see staggered waves,” a leading virologist, who insisted on anonymity, told me.
The lack of data means questions abound.
What about some 3,000 cases, which are not being assigned to any state because these people were found infected in places where they don’t live? (To put this into context, nine states in India have more than 3,000 cases.) How many of these cases have died or recovered?
Also, it is not clear whether the current data – sparse, and sporadic – is sufficient to map the future trajectory of the disease.
There is, for example, no robust estimate of carriers of the virus who have no symptoms – last month a senior government scientist said at least “80 out of every 100 Covid-19 patients may be asymptomatic or could be showing mild symptoms”.
Image copyright GETTY IMAGESImage caption More than 4,000 people have died of Covid-19 in India
If that is indeed true, then India’s fatality rate is bound to be lower. Atanu Biswas, a professor of statistics, says the predicted trajectory could change “with the huge inclusion of asymptomatic cases”. But, in the absence of data, India cannot be sure.
Also, epidemiologists say, measures like the doubling time of the infections and the reproduction number or R0 have their limitations. R0, or simply the R value, is a way of rating a disease’s ability to spread. The new coronavirus, Sars-CoV-2, has a reproduction number of about three, but estimates vary.
“These measures are good when we are in the middle of a pandemic, less robust with fewer cases. You do need forecasting models for at least a month’s projection to anticipate healthcare needs. We should always evaluate an aggregate of evidence, not just one measure, but a cascade of measures,” Bhramar Mukherjee, a professor of biostatistics and epidemiology at the University of Michigan, told me.
Others say even calculating the number of recorded infections every day is “not always a good indicator of how an infection is spreading”.
A better option would be to look at the number of new tests and new cases every day that would provide a “degree of standardisation”, K Srinath Reddy, president of the Public Health Foundation of India, told me.
Likewise, he believes, a measure of how many Covid-19 deaths have occurred compared with the size of a country’s population – the numbers of deaths per million people – is a better indicator of the fatality rate. Reason: the denominator – the country’s population – remains stable.
In the absence of robust and expansive data, India appears to be struggling to predict the future trajectory of the infection.
It is not clear yet how many deaths are not being reported, although there is no evidence of large scale “hidden deaths”.
Image copyright GETTY IMAGESImage caption A Covid-19 isolation ward in India
Epidemiologists say they would like to see clearer data on deaths due to pneumonia and influenza-like illnesses at this time over the past few years to quantify excess deaths and help with accurate reporting of Covid-19 deaths.
They would also like to see what racial disparities in infections and deaths there are to help improve containment in specific community areas. (In Louisiana, for example, African Americans accounted for 70% of Covid-19 deaths, while comprising 33% of the population.)
What is clear, say epidemiologists, is that India is as yet unable to get a grip on the extent of the spread of infection because of the still limited testing.
“We need reliable forecasting models with projection for the next few weeks for the country and the states,” says Dr Mukherjee.
Epidemiologists say India needs more testing and contact-tracing for both asymptomatic and symptomatic infections, as well as isolation and quarantine.
There’s also the need to test based on the “contact network” to stop super-spreader events – frontline workers, delivery workers, essential workers, practically anybody who interacts with a large group of people.
“We have to learn how to manage and minimise risk in our daily lives as the virus is going to be with us,” says Dr Mukherjee.
Without knowing the true number of infected cases India is, in the words of an epidemiologist, “flying blindfolded”.
That can seriously jeopardise India’s fight against the virus and hobble its response in reviving the broken economy.
Image copyright AFPImage caption Embankments have been washed away in Bangladesh
Millions of people across Bangladesh and eastern India are taking stock of the devastation left by Cyclone Amphan.
A massive clean-up operation has begun after the storm left 84 dead and flattened homes, uprooted trees and left cities without power.
India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi has arrived in West Bengal state to conduct an aerial survey.
Authorities in both countries had evacuated millions of people before the storm struck.
Covid-19 and social-distancing measures made mass evacuations more difficult, with shelters unable to be used to full capacity.
Officials also said people were afraid and reluctant to move to shelters for fear of contracting the virus.
The cyclone arrived with winds gusting up to 185km/h (115mph) and waves as high as 15ft.
Image copyright REUTERSImage caption Roads have been blocked by falling trees in BangladeshImage copyright AFPImage caption Many people have been injured in wall collapses in Bengal
It is the first super cyclone to form in the Bay of Bengal since 1999. Though its winds had weakened by the time it struck, it was still classified as a very severe cyclone.
Three districts in India’s West Bengal – South and North 24 Parganas and East Midnapore – were very badly hit.
In Bangladesh, there are reports of tens of thousands of homes damaged or destroyed and many villages submerged by storm surges in low-lying coastal areas like Khulna and Satkhira.
The affected areas include the Sunderbans, mangroves spread over an area of more than 10,000 square kilometres that spans both India and Bangladesh – the swampy islands are home to more than four million of the world’s poorest people.
Image copyright MUKTIImage caption Many homes, built of brick and mud, have been washed away
Those in the Sunderbans say it is too early to estimate casualties in the area, which is now cut-off from the mainland by the storm.
“There are houses which have collapsed and people could be trapped in them but we don’t know yet,” Debabrat Halder, who runs an NGO in one of the villages, told the BBC.
He recalls cyclone Bulbul in November 2019, which was followed by a huge incidence of fever, diarrhoea and flu, and is afraid that that the same may happen again.
And worse, he adds, is that the flooding from contaminated sea water, has likely destroyed the soil.
“Nothing will grow in this soil,” he says, adding that it will likely take years to convert it into fertile land again.
Image copyright MUKTIImage caption The Sunderbans delta is frequently hit by severe stormsImage copyright MUKTIImage caption Crops have all been destroyed by the flooding
Kolkata, the capital of West Bengal, and one of India’s biggest cities has been devastated. Its roads are flooded and the city was without power for more than 14 hours.
The state’s chief minister, Mamata Banerjee, said the devastation in Kolkata was “a bigger disaster than Covid-19”.
But assessment of the damage is being hampered by blocked roads and flooding in all these areas.
Image copyright INDIA MET DEPARTMENTImage caption The storm has worsened over the last 12 hours
Indian officials are on alert after Cyclone Amphan – due to make landfall on the east coast – looks likely to intensify into a “very severe” storm.
The storm is expected to make landfall on Wednesday afternoon and hit West Bengal and Odisha states. Twenty relief teams have been dispatched there.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi is due to chair a high-level meeting to further discuss preparations for the storm.
The cyclone comes amid huge levels of migration from the cities to villages.
Tens of thousands of people are fleeing cities in the wake of a lockdown to curb the spread of coronavirus. Both Odisha and West Bengal are seeing a large number of people return.
There are fears about the impact of the storm on them – many are on foot.
India’s meteorological department has issued a “yellow alert” for the region, advising fishermen not to “venture into the south Bay of Bengal during the next 24 hours, and north Bay of Bengal from 18-20 May”.
A ‘”yellow alert” or “cyclone alert” is issued “of the expected commencement of adverse weather over the coastal areas”.
In a bulletin, the weather department said the storm is likely to move across the north-west Bay of Bengal, and cross West Bengal and Bangladesh coasts from noon local time on 20 May as a “very severe cyclonic storm”.
It also warned of rough seas, with storm surges that could inundate coastal areas.
The head of India’s National Disaster Relief Force (NDRF), SN Pradhan, said they were watching the situation closely and were in touch with state governments.
Last June a powerful cyclone that was expected to make landfall on India’s western coast changed its course, and moved further into the Arabian sea.
Hundreds of thousands of people had already been evacuated as the region braced for Cyclone Vayu, which was classified as “very severe”.
And in May last year India evacuated more than a million people to safety to avoid Cyclone Fani, in which 16 people were killed in Odisha.
In the Bay of Bengal, the cyclone season typically runs from April to December.
The plight of these workers, many of whom have been walking for days without adequate food and water, has caused widespread anger in the country.
Train and bus services were shut during the lockdown and even though some have been restarted for migrants, many say they cannot afford the fare and are unsure if they will be accommodated on them due to social distancing norms.
Several have died in making the journey, including 16 migrants who were run over by a train while they were sleeping on the railway tracks.
Media caption Coronavirus: Heartbreaking scenes as India lockdown sparks mass migration
Ms Sitharaman also announced that workers would be able to use ration cards – usually only valid at village level – anywhere in the country regardless of where it was issued.
The ration cards usually entitle holders to subsidised food.
She added that the move towards portable cards would benefit nearly 670 million people and will be completed by March next year.
The government will also provide affordable housing for migrant labour by converting existing vacant government funded housing complexes, among other things.
The announcements on Thursday – the second tranche of a series of economic stimulus measures – were aimed at migrant workers, street hawkers, small traders and small farmers.
The full details of the economic package, which is equivalent to 10% of India’s gross domestic product, will be known in some days as the government is announcing a different tranche every day.
Ms Sitharaman’s announcements also included details of “special credit” to be provided to five million street hawkers who have been forced to cease working over the last month and a half.
To help farmers, the government also announced an emergency $4bn “working capital funding” which would benefit some 30 million small farmers to meet crop requirements in May and June
In March, India said it would provide around 1.7 trillion rupees in direct cash transfers and food security measures, mainly for the poor.
However, Mr Modi’s administration had been accused in some quarters of not having done enough.
WINDHOEK, May 1 (Xinhua) — China’s poverty eradication policy and deliberate attempts to improve the lives of the rural population is a model for Namibia and Africa in general to follow in dealing with inequality in society, experts have said.
University of Namibia social and political analyst Ndumbah Kwamwayah said China has laid a strong foundation in dealing with poverty and emancipating its people since the days of Mao Zedong.
“Chinese literature especially the life journey of Chairman Mao is a good benchmark for developing countries that want to find ways of creating equal societies. If you check here in Namibia inequality and rural poverty are there despite our economy being agro-based.
“We need to take a cue from countries like China who have created better societies through improving agriculture production and mechanization through investing heavily in local people,” he said.
According to Kamwayah, China continues to value its agro-based economy as well as investment in rural development.
“China through its leaders in the past and present has come up with strong policies of decentralizing key services and also curbing rural urban drift through developing villages. Chinese literature also strongly captures the aspect of local development.
“In Namibia there are many regions including the Kunene, Zambezi and Kavango which are heavily affected by poverty. These need deliberate policies to be improved,” he said.
Political analyst from University of Namibia, Hoze Riruako said poverty eradication remains one of the biggest challenges confronting Namibia in contemporary times.
“What is more important is not to reproduce the Chinese way of doing things but to pick certain traits that can dent poverty and rural development from them,” he said.
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.
Image copyright GETTY IMAGESImage caption An empty stretch of the road and Delhi Police barricades to screen commuters during lockdown, at Delhi Gate on April 16, 2020 in New Delhi, India.
India has eased some restrictions imposed as part of a nationwide lockdown to curb the spread of the coronavirus.
Most of the new measures are targeted at easing pressure on farming, which employs more than half the nation’s workforce.
Allowing farms to operate again has been seen as essential to avoid food shortages.
But some other measures announced last week, will not be implemented.
This includes the delivery of non-essential items such as mobile phones, computers, and refrigerators by e-commerce firms – the government reversed its decision on that on Sunday.
And none of the restrictions will be lifted in areas that are still considered “hotspots” for the virus – this includes all major Indian cities.
Domestic and international flights and inter-state travel will also remain suspended.
So what restrictions are being eased?
Most of the new measures target agricultural businesses – farming, fisheries and plantations. This will allow crops to be harvested and daily-wagers and others working in these sectors to continue earning.
To restore the supply chain in these industries, cargo trucks will also be allowed to operate across state borders to transport produce from villages to the cities.
Essential public works programmes – such as building roads and water lines in rural areas – will also reopen, but under strict instructions to follow social distancing norms. These are a huge source of employment for hundreds of thousands of daily-wage earners, and farmers looking to supplement their income.
Banks, ATMs, hospitals, clinics, pharmacies and government offices will remain open. And the self-employed – such as plumbers, electricians and carpenters – will also be allowed to work.
Some public and even private workplaces have been permitted to open in areas that are not considered hotspots.
But all businesses and services that reopen are expected to follow social distancing norms.
Who decides what to reopen?
State governments will decide where restrictions can be eased. And several state chief ministers, including Delhi’s Arvind Kejriwal, have said that none of the restrictions will be lifted in their regions.
Mr Kejriwal said the situation in the national capital was still serious and the decision would be reviewed after one week.
India’s most populous state, Uttar Pradesh, will also see all restrictions in place, as will the southern states of Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and Karnataka.
The southern state of Kerala, which has been widely acknowledged for its success in dealing with the virus, has announced a significant easing of the lockdown in areas that it has demarcated as “green” zones.
This includes allowing private vehicular movement and dine-in services at restaurants, with social distancing norms in place. However, it’s implementing what is known as an “odd-even” scheme – private cars with even and odd number plates will be allowed only on alternate days, to limit the number of people on the road.
LHASA, April 11 (Xinhua) — Southwest China’s Tibet Autonomous Region has been making efforts to boost e-commerce in its agricultural and pastoral areas, according to the local poverty alleviation office.
Tibet has set up hundreds of e-commerce service centers in its villages, towns and counties to help form an e-commerce service network and help locals get jobs or start up their own businesses.
Thanks to these efforts, the total revenue of online sales in these areas had reached over 200 million yuan (about 28.4 million U.S. dollars) in 2019.
“We can sell local specialties such as dried yak meat and curd to customers via livestreaming,” said Samten, a herdsman who lives in Zaxoi Village in Lhasa, capital of Tibet.
Samten added that the spike in online sales in Tibet was due to the Internet and logistics coverage in nearly all the villages.
At present, major China’s express giants including SF Express and JD.com have set up branches in Lhasa and other cities, while more couriers have entered counties and villages across the region, benefiting more local farmers and herdsmen.
CHINDIA ALERT: You'll be living in their world, very soon 