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India’s train system is like the blood vessels of this nation. In an exclusive story that took months to report, we found that the government’s enormous train operation to bring home stranded migrant laborers spread Covid-19 across this country. Read here: https://nyti.ms/383G4FG
We collected reams of data. We interviewed dozens of officials in the Modi government. We traveled across India and spoke to many families who lost loved ones to Covid-19.
The trains became virus hotspots. Packed beyond capacity, they ran from India’s biggest cities, which were virus hotspots, to rural areas that had very few if any virus cases.
We zeroed in on Ganjam, a beautiful coastal district in Odisha. Ganjam absorbed a deluge of trains – hundreds of them. Many migrant laborers aboard were sick with coronavirus. People started dying immediately.
We tracked down Ganjam’s first death, Prafulla Behera, an impoverished textile worker who had four daughters. As his brother watched helplessly, Prafulla collapsed at a quarantine center. The men around him were terrified. And shocked. Prafulla's house:
Ganjam, like so many rural areas, had very few resources to fight against a deadly virus. Ganjam threw everything it had at the virus. It drafted 1000s of workers. It turned taxis into ambulances. Teachers taught yoga at quarantine centers.
We spoke to Harsh Vardhan, the health minister, and Sanjeev Sanyal, principal economic adviser; and many railways officials. All were helpful to us. They said Modi’s government was under enormous pressure to help bring migrants home.
Opposition figures took responsibility for the trains as well, telling us that they had pressured Mr. Modi to bring home the millions of migrant laborers who had no work and little food, trapped in the cities under the lockdown.
The trains spread Covid-19 into the deepest corners of the country, an unintended consequence of a very tight lockdown that triggered panic, then chaos. We would love to hear your comments to the article, right here: https://nyti.ms/383G4FG
