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The Long Read: “No safety nets” – debts weigh on grieving Indian families

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ROLI SRIVASTAVA AND ANURADHA NAGARAJ, of Thomson Reuters Foundation, report on the dramatic impacts the coronavirus pandemic has has on many living in India…

It’s been over a month since his mother died, but Vishal Meghwal can still hear her struggling to breathe as he desperately messaged friends to lend him money for the drugs she needed.

The coronavirus pandemic had already cost the 24-year-old his savings and his income from painting houses in Ajmer, a city of tombs and shrines in north-west India. Losing his mother was the biggest blow of all.

“I have never been in a situation like this,” said Meghwal by phone from Ajmer. “I have loans to repay now. There is no work. And my mother is no longer by my side.”

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Vishal Meghwal looks at a photograph of his mother who died of COVID-19 in May this year at his home in Ajmer, India, on 24th June. PICTURE: Thomson Reuters Foundation/Deepak Sharma.

Meghwal is one of tens of thousands of Indians having to contend with the triple burden of bereavement, joblessness and debt after a brutal second wave of COVID-19 that brought the country’s fragile health system to its knees.

Repeated lockdowns have caused unemployment to soar and wiped out the savings of many households in India, where families impacted by the pandemic had to fund treatment for sick relatives themselves, often having to borrow to do so.

“We were never rich. But we were never poor either. My father and I were both earning. And we ate well. But we exhausted our savings on food and bills to survive last year’s lockdown after we stopped getting work.”

– Vishal Meghwal 

As case numbers fall, the country has begun to unlock. But the virus has left deep scars on its economy, which suffered its worst ever contraction last year, and families face the daunting task of repaying large debts with work still scarce.

The central bank slashed growth forecasts, with economists pointing to a range of data – from the rate of cheques bouncing to the amount of mortgaged gold jewellery up for sale – showing the scale of the hardship.

When his mother fell ill, Meghwal eventually managed to get her a bed in a government hospital. But he had to buy everything she needed himself – from drugs to oxygen masks – from pharmacies that had doubled their prices.   

“We were never rich. But we were never poor either,” he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

“My father and I were both earning. And we ate well. But we exhausted our savings on food and bills to survive last year’s lockdown after we stopped getting work.”

Before the pandemic struck, Meghwal’s father built houses, and he painted them.

When that work dried up, and with unemployment rates touching a 12-month high of 11.9 per cent, Meghwal took work as a porter.

But partial lockdowns make the work uncertain, and even on the rare days when he gets work, Meghwal only makes about 300 rupees. He worries endlessly about the 60,000 rupees ($US807) that he borrowed for his mother’s treatment and must now repay.

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Hand cart pullers rest post noon as the market shuts early owing to lockdown restrictions that have hit local businesses and impacted work opportunities for hand cart pullers in Ajmer, India, on 25th June. PICTURE: Thomson Reuters Foundation/Deepak Sharma.

About 100 million people lost jobs during the nationwide lockdown last year and about 15 million workers remained out of work at the end of 2020, according to the State of Working India report, a study conducted by the Azim Premji University.

An estimated 230 million people earned less than $US5 a day between March and October, 2020, according to data from the privately-owned Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy.

The impact on the informal sector, which employs the bulk of India’s workers, has been particularly devastating.

While the incomes of salaried employees fell by an average of 40 per cent in Aprilthe drop for small traders and daily wage workers was 75 per cent, according to data from the National Bureau of Economic Research.

“Nearly half those in the formal work sector are now doing informal work where there are no safety nets,” said Amit Basole, director of the Centre for Sustainable Employment at Azim Premji University, who co-authored the study.

“They will have to make tough choices going ahead – from pulling kids out of school to delaying healthcare. Any emergency or sudden expenditure will finish them.” 



Two weeks before Meghwal lost his mother, Renu Singhal was rushing her husband in an autorickshaw through the streets of Agra, the city in northern India that is home to the famed monument to love, the Taj Mahal.

The 45-year-old’s husband died in her arms, up-ending her “happy family life” and leaving her with unpaid bills, rent and meagre savings.

“It was all over in 24 hours – his fever spiked, I rushed him to hospitals and he died in an autorickshaw waiting to be admitted,” Singhal said in a matter-of-fact tone from her Agra home.

“Just like that, I became in charge of my school-going daughter’s and my own future.”

Singhal, a housewife, has not had a chance to mourn her husband’s death. She is spending every waking moment trying to figure out how to pay rent and where the next meal will come from once the “charity of strangers” stops.

“Whatever savings we had was spent on his treatment, the funeral, paying last month’s rent and running around,” she said.

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Renu Agarwal and her 16-year-old daughter in their two room rented house in Agra. She lost her husband to COVID after a harrowing time. Her husband was refused admission to a private hospital saying they didn’t have oxygen and had to give him mouth to mouth resuscitation in the auto rickshaw but still lost him outside the government hospitals medical facility. She faces an uncertain future as having been a housewife all her life is struggling with how to look after her. PICTURE: Thomson Reuters Foundation/Ruhani Kaur

India’s creaking public healthcare infrastructure meant even those without means had to pay for treatment as state-run hospitals quickly became overwhelmed.

State governments including Maharashtra, Kerala, Assam and Tamil Nadu capped the rates that private hospitals could charge for treating coronavirus patients.

But in practice, families desperate to get treatment for a loved one were prepared to pay whatever it took, often going into debt in the process.

More than 60 per cent of spending on healthcare in India comes from private individuals, one of the highest rates in the world, with the federal government accounting for only about nine per cent, official estimates show.

Since the start of the pandemic, household savings have dropped and borrowings have gone up, according to the central bank’s most recent estimates.

A Reuters survey found that borrowing had risen by three times since the pandemic hit in March 2020 and about half of that was taken out the past six months. 

The long-term consequences of this in a country that even before the pandemic was grappling with widespread inequality and a major youth unemployment problem is hard to predict.

India has lifted tens of millions of people out of extreme poverty in the last decade, but the World Bank has said the pandemic has reversed that trend, at least temporarily.

India has lifted tens of millions of people out of extreme poverty in the last decade, but the World Bank has said the pandemic has reversed that trend, at least temporarily.

The number of Indians with incomes of $US2 or less each day, has gone up by 75 million as the recession brought by the virus clawed back years of progress, the US-based Pew Research Centre said in a report.   

It estimated the number of people earning between $US10 and $US20 a day shrank to 66 million, down a third from a pre-pandemic figure of 99 million.

The rise in informal working has pushed poverty levels up, with women and younger workers worst hit, said the State of Working India report.

Households have coped with the decline in earnings by eating less, selling belongings and borrowing, it said.

Basole warned that a delayed economic recovery would mean that “the increase in poverty will persist and there is a danger of people not being able to recover from poverty even if growth comes back later”.

“This is because debts may build up and assets will be sold. This can create a poverty trap,” he said.

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A daily wage labourer waits for work in Ajmer, India, on 24th June. PICTURE: Thomson Reuters Foundation/Deepak Sharma

As India struggles to balance reining in COVID-19 with reopening, campaigners say a shadow pandemic of hunger is taking root.

“Hunger is a continuous disaster for large parts of our population,” wrote Anshu Gupta, founder of non-profit Goonj in The Indian Express newspaper, saying access to lentils and rice – the staple food of millions – was no less important than access to oxygen.

India ranked 94th of 107 countries in last year’s Global Hunger Index, which described its hunger level as “serious”.

In their letters to the government, campaigners at the Right to Food Campaign – a collective of individuals and organisations working on hunger and malnutrition – said families were earning less, eating poorly and borrowing money to buy food.

“The expenditure on healthcare is much more this year. Those who could meet daily expenses last year are unable to manage this time around,” said Dipa Sinha, a professor at Ambedkar University and Right to Food campaign member.   

“The expenditure on healthcare is much more this year. Those who could meet daily expenses last year are unable to manage this time around.”

– Dipa Sinha, a professor at Ambedkar University and Right to Food campaign member.

To mitigate that, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has extended until November a free food scheme started last year to get people through the worst impacts the pandemic on jobs and wages.

Under the scheme, 800 million of India’s 1.3 billion people are eligible to receive five kilograms a month of free food grains.

Some nutritionists have said that is inadequate and warned that undernourished people were less able to fight the virus

“There is no oil, salt or pulses [in the free food program],” said Veena Shatrugna, former deputy director of the National Institute of Nutrition.

“A working adult needs 2,400 calories, a teenager needs 2,000 calories and the government free food grain aid only adds up to 600 calories per person per day,” she said, warning that “the collateral damage of the pandemic is going to be huge”.

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Volunteers distribute free food to attendants of patients and poor people outside a state-run hospital in Ajmer, India, on 25th June. PICTURE: Thomson Reuters Foundation/Deepak Sharma

Even the food grains scheme is no guarantee against severe hunger for those without documents.

Guddi Devi, a 40-year-old single mother of five, used to pack goods at a factory in the northern Indian town of Aligarh for a monthly wage of about 4,000 rupees – just enough to feed her children, none of whom were enrolled in school.

But when lockdown was imposed on 24th March last year, the factory laid off all workers, including Devi. By May this year, she and her children were found starving.

“When I pleaded for help, I thought of it as my last shot at life. I was prepared to die,” Devi told the Thomson Reuters Foundation from her hospital bed in Aligarh.

“We had eaten a roti or maybe two in the last 12 days,” she said, referring to the flatbreads that are a staple of northern India.

“We had eaten a roti or maybe two in the last 12 days,”

– Guddi Devi, a 40-year-old single mother of five, speaking of the plight of her family earlier this year.

Without documents, Devi said, she had no way to seek foodgrains being given for free by the government.

The hospital’s medical superintendent said the whole family was malnourished when they were admitted and were suffering from fever and weakness. One of Devi’s sons was so anaemic that he needed a blood transfusion.

Dignity has been a recurring loss during the pandemic in a country with no social safety net.

When Meghwal was fighting to get his mother admitted in a government hospital, another woman on a stretcher died outside the hospital, under the harsh sun, her family looking helplessly around.

“This happened in front of me. My mother was by my side, sinking, but I was told to get a note of approval from an official in another hospital to get her admitted. I didn’t know what to think, what to do,” Meghwal said.

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Daily wage labourers wait for work in Ajmer, India, on 24th June. PICTURE: Thomson Reuters Foundation/Deepak Sharma

Those who survived the second wave said fear and frustration had stripped their loved ones of a dignified farewell.

Singhal in Agra had not had a proper conversation with her husband for almost a week when he was isolating at home. Her last moments with him were outside a hospital as she tried in vain to resuscitate him.

Meghwal had watched helpless as his mother stopped breathing on the afternoon of May 6, but there was no doctor around until past midnight to declare her dead.

“They kept telling me she was sleeping,” he said.

The next morning, Meghwal was given a PPE kit to wrap his mother’s body in. He wheeled her out on a stretcher and put her in an ambulance that charged him 1,000 rupees for the drive to the cemetery two kilometres away.

“Whatever we had is now gone,” he said. “I hear about government helping COVID-affected families. “I am trying to figure out how that works.”

India’s Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman has announced the strengthening of public healthcare institutions and a credit guarantee scheme for small borrowers.

“Families have regressed,” said Sunil Kumar, whose Aligarh-based non-profit Hands to Help is helping Devi. “People have lost work and their health is suffering. This pandemic has broken everyone financially.”

 

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