India’s COVID crisis pushes up the cost of living – and dying
Lucknow, India, May 15 (KMS) – Ashok Khondare, a 39-year-old vegetable seller in the western Indian city of Pune, had already borrowed money to pay for his sister’s treatment when she died in a private hospital two weeks after contacting COVID-19.
While trying to overcome the tragedy, he also had to deal with money problems that increased with his sister’s death.
The only available hearse driver charged 5,000 Indian rupees ($68) for a 6-km (four-mile) journey to the nearest crematorium – five times the going rate. When Khondare reached there, there was a long queue of dead bodies and waits of more than a day. He agreed to pay another 7,000 rupees to jump the queue.
“I had been experiencing a terrible situation for a fortnight,” he said. “I couldn’t sleep or eat properly. I wanted to end this as early as possible and didn’t mind paying an irrational amount.”
India’s second wave of the coronavirus has not only created shortages of oxygen, medicines and hospital beds, but also of wood for funeral pyres, hearses and crematorium slots, forcing people like Khondare to pay exorbitant amounts to perform the last rites of loved ones.
India is reporting by far the highest number of new daily cases globally, and over 4,000 deaths per day – figures that are almost certainly under-reported, according to experts.
India’s Hindu majority cremates its dead, and the huge numbers of deaths are creating backlogs at cremation grounds and shortages of manpower and raw materials.
“There is huge demand for firewood used for funeral pyres at crematoria, but supplies are not sufficient,” said Rohit Pardeshi, a firewood merchant in Satara, a city in the western Indian state of Maharashtra.
Due to a local lockdown designed to curb the pandemic, there is a shortage of people to cut trees and those workers who are available are asking for higher wages.
Courtesy: Reuters
