'I am so afraid’: India’s poor face world’s largest lockdown
The street peddler watched the prime minister’s speech on a battered TV, with her family of five crowded around her in a one-room house with no toilet and no running water. It’s squeezed into a Mumbai shantytown controlled by an obscure Mumbai organized crime family.
Mina Jakhawadiya knew that outside, somewhere in India, the coronavirus had arrived, wending its way through this sprawling nation of 1.3 billion people. But the invisible danger seemed far away.
Then suddenly it wasn’t.
Mina Ramesh Jakhawadiya, center, poses for a picture with her family members, son, Ritik Ramesh, left, daughters Vaijayanti Ramesh, second left, Guddi Ramesh, second right, and husband Ramesh Karsan Jakhawadiya, outside her one room house in a Slum in Mumbai, India, April 3, 2020. (AP Photo/Rafiq Maqbool)
“Every state, every district, every lane, every village will be under lockdown” for three weeks, Prime Minister Narendra Modi told the nation on March 24, giving India four hours’ notice to prepare. “If you can’t handle these 21 days, this country and your family will go back 21 years.”
As governments around the world try to slow the spread of the coronavirus, India has launched one of the most draconian social experiments in human history, locking down its entire population -- including about 176 million people who struggle to survive on $1.90 a day or less. Modi’s order allows Indians out of their homes only to buy food, medicine or other essentials. No going to work. No school. No playgrounds.
India’s handling of the lockdown and the ever-spreading virus is a test for the developing world, offering clues to how countries from Bangladesh to Nigeria can fight COVID-19 without forcing their poorest citizens into even worse hunger and further destitution.
While India’s economy has boomed over the past two decades, pulling vast numbers out of extreme poverty, inequality also has grown.
Mina Ramesh Jakhawadiya, carries a water can after filing it from a public tap in a Slum in Mumbai, India, April1, 2020. (AP Photo/Rafiq Maqbool)
Mina Ramesh JakhawadiyaÕs daughter Guddi Ramesh washes utensils outside her room in a Slum in Mumbai, India, March 30, 2020. (AP Photo/Rafiq Maqbool)
Mina Ramesh Jakhawadiya, center, with her husband Ramesh Karsan receive free food packets outside their slum in Mumbai, India, April 8, 2020. (AP Photo/Rafiq Maqbool)
Those near the top can hunker down in gated apartment complexes, watching Bollywood movies on Netflix and ordering food deliveries online. But not Jakhawadiya, who makes a living selling cheap plastic buckets and baskets with her husband on the streets of Mumbai.
For her, the order means 21 days in a 6-by-9-foot room with five people, no work, a couple days of food and the equivalent of about $13 in cash.
She looked at Modi speaking on their little television, spattered with stickers left over the years by one child or another.
“I am so afraid,” she thought.
Mina Ramesh Jakhawadiya, right with her son Ritik Ramesh in her lap watches news on coronovirus as her daughter Guddi Ramesh brushes her teeth in their one room house in a Slum in Mumbai, India, March 31, 2020. (AP Photo/Rafiq Maqbool)
The reasons for the lockdown are clear.
While India had only 536 confirmed coronavirus cases and 10 deaths when Modi gave his speech, it’s also one of the most crowded places on Earth, a nation where social distancing is impossible for millions. The risk is that it could hopscotch from the Himalayas to South India, ravaging cities and villages. Mumbai, for instance, has a population density of 77,000 people per square mile — nearly three times higher than New York City, which crowding helped turn into one of the world’s deadliest epicenters.
Then there’s India’s medical system. Except for private health care for those who can afford it, the medical system barely functions across wide swathes of the country. Public hospitals, especially outside major cities, often have limited supplies, questionable cleanliness and third-rate doctors.
Very few people have been tested, so the true scale of the outbreak is unknown. If India’s hospital system were overrun by COVID-19 cases, it could collapse in days, leaving untold numbers to die.
As a result, many experts say Modi had to act as he did to buy time to prepare.
The lockdown means India has “probably pushed out the epidemic peak by three to eight weeks,” said Ramanan Laxminarayan, an epidemiologist and economist who directs the Center for Disease Dynamics, Economics and Policy in Washington.
But that logic means little for Indians at the bottom of the economic ladder. For these people — for Jakhawadiya in Mumbai, for a maid walking to her home village in the north, for a watchman bicycling his way across the country — three weeks can be an eternity.
“If they stopped the lockdown for just a few days then I could go into town and earn some money,” said Paresh Talukdar, a beggar who supports a family of five in India’s far northeast state of Assam with food supplies down to almost nothing. “One or two days (of lockdown) would be OK, but 21 days is a very long time.”
Paresh Talukdar, right, who lost his leg and a hand stands outside his hut in a village Jayantipur, some 60 kilometers from Gauhati, in eastern Indian state of Assam, March 31, 2020. (AP Photo/Anupam Nath)
Now 60, Talukdar lost his left leg and hand more than 30 years ago in a fight over family land. In normal times, he rides a bus from his tiny village to the nearest city, where there are enough people to make a living begging. Most days bring him about $2.50.
But now there’s no bus to take, and few people out on the streets anyway.
Already, he says, the ever-growing hunger has made it hard to sleep. “Thoughts are always coming into my mind, like: What’s going to happen tomorrow?”
Prayagraj, central India
The balloon seller just couldn’t get used to the lockdown.
“There is a strange stillness in our neighborhood since all this started,” said Rajesh Dhaikar.
Normally, he has a small stall in a nearby market, selling plastic bursts of red and blue and yellow one at a time, and rarely earning more than $2.50 a day. His wife, Suneeta, makes about $20 a month cleaning homes.
They have two rooms with a thatch roof covered with a blue tarpaulin. In the rainy season, water seeps in. The single light dangles from a cord.
Suneeta sleeps on the only bed. The five kids sleep on the floor lined up under blankets. Rajesh sometimes sleeps on the sidewalk out front, stretched out on a cart handmade from wooden planks and bicycle tires.
Rajesh Dhaikar, second row left, stands with his family members, son Deepak and daughter Arti and in front row from left, sons , Deepu, Raj, daughter Sapna and wife Suneeta, outside their one room house in Prayagraj, India, April 1, 2020. (AP Photo/Rajesh Kumar Singh)
They have a bank account — with about $6.50 in it.
Nearly half the family’s income comes from their 17-year-old son Deepak, a thin, wiry boy with carefully combed hair and a teenager’s bored slouch. He dropped out of school after 7th grade and now makes about $40 a month working in a neighborhood tea stall. One day, he says, he’ll have his own stall.
When he can, Deepak slips outside to play cricket with friends. They scatter when the police come by, then return to their match a few minutes later.
Rajesh Dhaikar's kitchen corner is seen in his one room house in Prayagraj, India, April 3, 2020. (AP Photo/Rajesh Kumar Singh)
His mother doesn’t like it. Suneeta doesn’t completely understand coronavirus, but she knows getting near other people can kill you.
“What else do you expect from a 17-year-old? He doesn’t listen to anyone and does whatever he wants,” she said.
This story was produced with the support of the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.
Rajesh Dhaikar sits idle with children in his small house, in Prayagraj, India, April 5, 2020. (AP Photo/Rajesh Kumar Singh)
Rajesh Dhaikar sleeps on his handcart on which he sells balloons , outside his one room house in Prayagraj, India, April 3, 2020,. (AP Photo/Rajesh Kumar Singh)
Rajesh Dhaikar's wife Suneeta and son Deepu bring water on their hand cart for the house in Prayagraj, India, April 8, 2020. (AP Photo/Rajesh Kumar Singh)
Rajesh Dhaikar’s son Deepak stands in their one small house in Prayagraj, India, April 5, 2020. (AP Photo/Rajesh Kumar Singh)
Fatima Begum, a widow, who sells vegetables on roadside, holds the photograph of her husband as she poses for the photograph with her children, sons Mohammad Eliyas, behind left, and Sameer, front right, daughters Sabina Akhtar, behind right, and Shabnam Akhtar, left, in their house on the outskirts of Jammu, India, April 10, 2020. Begum is one among the millions of workers who are part of IndiaÕs par of informal economy that has been worse hit by the nationwide lockdown, pushing many like her in deeper poverty. India has launched one of the most draconian social experiments in human history, locking down its entire population, including nearly 800 million people who struggle to survive on the equivalent of a few dollars a day. (AP Photo/Channi Anand)
Text from AP news story, ‘I am so afraid’: India’s poor face world’s largest lockdown, by Tim Sullivan and Sheikh Saaliq.
