作者： bharat.cn

India’s Covid-19 story is typically told at the national or state level. But national trends hide the more granular stories — both good and bad. On the one hand, five districts account for half of the deaths, and on the other, 75 districts have made a remarkable turnaround.

The 10 districts with the highest cases till now are all among India’s million-plus cities. Delhi does not make it to the list because with 11 districts, the average burden of each district is lower than the worst-hit ones. Four districts in Maharashtra are among the worst hit. These are Mumbai, Mumbai Suburban, Pune and Thane.

Maharashtra is the worst affected state in India due to coronavirus, followed by Gujarat. Two districts of Gujarat — Ahmedabad and Surat — also appear among the 10 districts in India with the highest number of cases. The others are Chennai, Indore, Jaipur and Kolkata. But leaving aside Mumbai and Delhi, a more diverse range of districts have a higher case burden proportionate to their populations, including two districts each in Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan.

Five districts — three among them in Maharashtra — account for over half of all deaths in India. These are Ahmedabad, Mumbai, Mumbai Suburban, Pune and Kolkata. But among districts with at least 20 deaths, some districts in Madhya Pradesh and West Bengal too have an unusually high burden of deaths for their populations.

However, success stories at the district level abound. As of today, 75 districts, which earlier reported confirmed cases, are now reporting zero active cases. This includes 12 districts that had over 10 cases, but have no active cases at the moment, with Kerala leading the pack.

In his fifth address to the nation on Covid-19, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced an economic package to “make India self-reliant” signaling that the government has shifted its coronavirus strategy from “survival” to “revival” mode. The details of the economic package will be unveiled in days to come.

PM Modi said if the latest package is added to the economic package announced recently by the government in the wake of Covid-19 crisis and the decisions taken by the RBI, “today’s package totals to Rs 20 lakh crore.”

He said, “This is 10 per cent of India’s GDP.”

Before we proceed, let’s recall some numbers.

PM Modi made it clear that the Rs 20 lakh package includes liquidity infusion by the RBI in phases recently, and also Rs 1.7 lakh crore package announced by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on March 27.

The RBI’s first major decision came even before coronavirus had become an Indian crisis. On February 6, the RBI announced measures to inject liquidity in the economy to the tune of Rs 2.8 lakh crore.

When coronavirus outbreak became an Indian phenomenon, the RBI announced on March 27 – the same day as Sitharaman announced the special package – to inject an additional liquidity of around Rs 3.75 lakh crore.

On April 17 and 27, the RBI infused Rs 1 lakh crore more liquidity through two separate announcements. The monetary value of all these announcements (Sitharaman plus RBI) comes at around Rs 9.75 lakh crore.

The rest, that is, Rs 10.25 lakh crore is likely to be the actual announcement made by PM Modi on Tuesday evening. Standalone, this is little over 5 per cent of India’s GDP.

Six migrant labourers who were walking from Uttar Pradesh’s Muzaffarnagar to their homes in Bihar were run over by a bus late on Wednesday.

Besides six migrant labourers who died on spot, four workers have been injured in the incident, confirmed Prashant Kumar, ADG, Meerut zone. All of them were working as labourers in Punjab.

The road accident occurred on Saharanpur road in Nagar Kotwali area.

Just a day ago, three migrant labourers and an infant girl were killed while 46 others suffered injuries in two road accidents when they were returning to their homes in Uttar Pradesh from other states.

In another incident that shook the nation last week, 16 migrant labourers were mowed down by a goods train in Aurangabad district of Maharashtra. They, too, were walking back to their homes in Madhya Pradesh.