Haryanaâs Chautala village sent hundreds to farm protests. Then Covid cases, deaths piled up
Former Haryana chief minister O.P. Chautala s ancestral village had been sending four-five people from every family to the farmers agitation, said villagers. Till Covid deaths started mounting.
Ananya Bhardwaj 31 May, 2021 8:00 am IST Text Size:
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Sirsa: Chautala village in Haryanaâs Sirsa district is a far cry from the bustling small town image presented by the other villages in the neighbourhood.
Here, the roads are deserted, no one can be found under the Banyan tree at the
chaupalâa meeting spot for the villageâs elderly. Shops are closed and the stage and tents that had been set up at a protest site in the village, in support of the farmersâ agitation against the three agricultural laws passed last year, has been dismantled.
Farmers take turns travelling to and from Tikri & Kundli borders, authorities say they carry Covid back to villages. But protesters claim Covid is 'imaginary'.
Titoli village in Rohtak has seen 60 deaths in 40 days, with many complaining of fever & chest pain. From wind to 5G towers, villagers have come up with many theories to explain this.
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India is in the middle of its second wave of the coronavirus pandemic. Our social media feeds have morphed into SOS helplines with citizens running from pillar to post to arrange medicines and oxygen cylinders. Amid this, the pack of foreign correspondents and their desi counterparts, who in the first wave couldn’t explain India’s low death rates, have made a triumphant comeback, with many of them claiming that India is grossly underreporting its Covid-19 death numbers now.
As per John Burn-Murdoch of the
Financial Times, who put together data for seven districts through news reports, the “numbers of Covid victims who have been cremated are 10x larger than official Covid death counts in same areas.”