Before Covid-19 appeared, the Ganges River was once “flooded with corpses”. In 1918, when an influenza pandemic swept through India and killed an estimated 18 million people, the river’s waters filled with the smell of rotting corpses. This creepy scene is making a comeback because of a pandemic. The official death toll in India is reported to be more than 250,000, but experts say the real number is five times higher, according to Guardians. These bodies began to wash up on the banks of the sacred river, becoming a haunting symbol for the uncounted Covid-19 deaths. According to the Economist , these images also reveal the picture of Indian society with poor people struggling to cope with the pandemic and make a living. Relatives and relatives carry the body of a person who died of Covid-19 to be buried on the banks of the Ganges River. Photo: Shutterstock. No one sells firewood to cremate relatives On May 19, India continued to set a new record for the number of deaths in a day due to Covid-19: 4,529 people. This is the highest number of daily Covid-19 deaths of any country ever, surpassing the previous record in the US with 4,475 deaths in a day. To date, India has recorded more than 25 million cases and 275,000 deaths from Covid-19. However, there are no official statistics on the number of bodies discovered in the past two weeks in the open stretch of the Ganges that flows through the poor rural states of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, or buried in shallow sandy graves along the riverbanks. in Uttar Pradesh. Through statistics, locals and journalists here put the number of more than 2,000 bodies. In the village of Gahmar in Uttar Pradesh, 15-year-old Raju Chaudhry, who works on a fishing boat, said he had recently seen “about 50 bodies being washed away every day, for many days”. There is no way to know if these people have Covid-19 or not, although Indian authorities have acknowledged some of the bodies as those who died from the pandemic. According to official figures released by the government, the death and infection rate of Covid-19 in Gahmar village is low. But Bhupendra Upadhyay, a priest here, said a lot of people have died in the past few weeks. Earthen vases hang from a banyan tree by the Ganges River in the village of Gahmar, each representing a person who has just died. Photo: Guardian. “I saw 30 to 35 bodies being brought into the river recently and drowned here. Many people drop dead bodies in the river because they have difficulty arranging cremation, because there are so many dead people,” he said. Upadhyay pointed to the trunk of the banyan tree where he was sitting. On the trunk, dozens of earthen pots are tied up. “Each of those vases represents a deceased person. Let’s see how many, just from the last 10 days,” he said. In the case of Shambhu Nath, his family had no difficulty in cremation, as villagers helped and attended the funeral. But after the second brother in the family died of Covid-19, they found themselves abandoned by their neighbors. “When we tried to buy firewood for our cremation, we were chased away. No one in the village could help us with the cremation because they suspected we had Covid-19. We couldn’t get the wood and didn’t know what else to do. , so we had to drown his body in the river. We did it at 11am the next morning, and only a close family came to offer condolences,” he said. What do corpses in the Ganges reveal? Sheet Economist An assessment of India’s covid-19 crisis, with images of corpses floating in the Ganges, reveals two things. One is the scale of the tragedy sweeping across the vast territory of India. In remote rural areas, far from city clinics, people are not being tested for Covid-19. Therefore, no cases or deaths were recorded. The officially published death toll is now a fraction of the true number. Economist identify. The second thing that the bodies in the Ganges reveal is that this wave of Covid-19 is ravaging the lives of the poor, who are already struggling to make ends meet. The poor are losing their jobs, starving to eat and falling victim to scams. Jammu and Kashmir State Disaster Response Force soldiers carry empty coffins to transport the bodies of people who died of Covid-19 on May 19. Photo: AP. “People borrow money to pay for medicines, or oxygen tanks, or pay extra fees for ambulance drivers because they have to carry Covid-19 patients. So they can’t afford to pay for cremation or funeral. ceremony,” Utpal Pathak, a local journalist, told Economist. After the first wave of Covid-19 swept through India in 2020, many local newspapers and research institutes tried to calculate the economic impact of the pandemic on the poor. Pew Research Institute estimates that as of January 2020, only 4.3% of Indians earn less than $2. A year later, that number had increased to 9.7%, or 134 million people. In-depth research by Azim Premji University in Bangalore shows that after the 2020 nationwide lockdown, about 230 million Indians slipped below the poverty line, which is set based on the minimum wage (about $45 a month). ). The university researchers also found that during the lockdown, 90% of the poor consumed less food. Six months later, their diets still haven’t returned to normal. In the past year, the income of Indian workers, including the lucky 10% who have a salaried job, has fallen by a third, according to the report. Economist. Shocked by the terrible impact of the pandemic and the blockade order in 2020, this year, the central government of India let the state and local governments to impose the blockade order on their own based on the actual situation. “Although the economy has not yet come to a complete standstill, the scale of this outbreak still leaves many families devastated.” Economist write. A worker helps cremate a body on the banks of the Ganges River. Photo: Getty. For many people, the biggest shock is the loss of family breadwinners. The Indian railway company has 1.2 million employees, but Covid-19 killed 1,952 employees here. In April, the state of Uttar Pradesh dispatched 1.2 million civil servants to work on local elections and counting votes. Report of Economist said this election was the cause of the large-scale outbreak. It is estimated that about 2,000 of the aforementioned civil servants died afterward, including 800 teachers. Each of those deaths cost their families weeks of grief and expensive treatment. Not to mention each person who died could have infected and made 20 others seriously ill. “In a normal year, one in 20 families is pushed into poverty due to high medical costs. What has happened in the last two months is understandable. Millions of wonderful Indian families Hope was forced to sell gold, pawn or borrow money. Economist write. In times of poverty, people are vulnerable to a variety of scams, such as healthcare workers demanding bribes to secure hospital admissions, purchasing counterfeit drugs, or even in some states, painted scams. on fire extinguishers to sell as oxygen tanks. Health Minister Harsh Vardhan, who has been promoting an herbal “cure” for Covid-19, last week advised Indians to eat more dark chocolate with “more than 70% cocoa” to beat the stress of the pandemic. . Bringing the ashes of unclaimed Covid-19 victims to the Ganges River Indian volunteers collect ashes from crematoriums to organize funerals for Covid-19 victims in Haridwar city.

To date, India has recorded more than 25 million cases and 275,000 deaths from Covid-19. However, many experts say the real number could be many times higher. On the riverbanks, many cremation pylons burned around the clock, many cremation sites had no space left. This phenomenon partly reflects the unprecedented number of deaths and has not been updated in official data. According to the BBC , behind the bodies floating in the river is a story of customs, poverty and a deadly pandemic. Many cremation pylons burn around the clock in India. Photo: Getty. Frighten The horrifying story in the state of Uttar Pradesh first came to light on May 10. The opening was the event of 71 bodies washed up on the riverbank in the village of Chausa in Bihar. Officials said some of the remains may have been leftover body parts that fell into the Ganges after cremations, but they suspect the bodies were dumped in the river. The police put a net across the water to prevent the same thing from happening. A day later, about 10 kilometers from Chausa, dogs and crows were seen swarming with dozens of decomposing bodies on the banks of a river in the village of Gahmar, in the Pradesh Ghazipur region of Uttar state. Locals said the body had been washed up on the embankment for several days. However, the authorities ignored their complaints about the stench until news of the corpses found downstream of Bihar made the news. Dozens of bodies swell and decompose, floating in the river. They were discovered by people when they went for a morning dip in India’s holiest river. Sheet Hindustan Police reported that 62 bodies had been recovered. Meanwhile, in Kannauj, Kanpur, Unnao and Prayagraj, the riverbanks are dotted with shallow graves. Shallow graves by the Ganges River. Photo: Getty. Videos sent to BBC from the banks of the Mehndi ghat in Kannauj shows a series of mounds in the shape of human corpses. Each of these mounds contained a body. At the nearby Mahadevi ghat, at least 50 bodies were found. Crematorium is overloaded Traditionally, Hindus will cremate the dead. However, many communities have a practice known as “Jal Pravah” – the practice of floating the bodies of children, unmarried women, or those who have died of an infectious disease or been bitten by a snake. Many poor people do not have money to cremate their loved ones, so they also wrap their bodies in white cotton cloth and drop them into the water. Sometimes bodies are tied to rocks to ensure they will sink to the bottom of the river, but many bodies are floated without the stones tied. In the time before the pandemic, corpses floating in the Ganges were not an uncommon sight. However, the number of bodies in the river is too much in recent times, still surprising many people. A journalist in Kanpur said the number of bodies in the river was proof of the “big disparity between the official death toll and the actual death toll related to Covid-19” in India. He said that from April 16 to May 5, the official reported number was 196 deaths in Kanpur, but data from seven crematoriums showed there were nearly 8,000 cremations. “All electric crematoriums are open 24/7 in April. Even so, there are still not enough furnaces to cremate bodies, so the government has allowed the use of wood on the outside grounds for cremation,” he said. to speak. “However, crematoriums only accept confirmed Covid-19 bodies from the hospital, while a very large number of people who died at home have not been tested. Families of the dead bring the bodies of their loved ones out. on the outskirts of the city or to neighboring districts like Unnao. When they can’t find wood or a place to cremate, they drop the bodies on the riverbed.” Cremation platforms along the riverside. Photo: Getty. Another journalist in Prayagraj also believes that many of the bodies in the river are those of Covid-19 patients who died at home without being tested, or poor people who can’t afford cremation. “It’s heartbreaking,” he said. “These people are someone’s son, daughter, brother, sister, father or mother. They deserve to be respected when they die. But their deaths are not even recorded – no one knows they died or is known. How to be buried? Burial from 7 a.m. to 11 p.m The discovery of graves and decomposing bodies, along with fears that the bodies could have contracted Covid-19 have sparked panic in villages along the river. Originating in the Himalayas, the Ganges is one of the largest rivers in the world. Hindus consider this river a sacred river, they believe that bathing in the Ganges will wash away sins and use this river water for religious ceremonies. In Kannauj, Jagmohan Tiwari, a 63-year-old resident, reported seeing “150-200 shallow graves” by the river. “The burial took place from 7 a.m. to 11 p.m.,” he said. The discovery of the graves caused panic in the area. People worry that bodies buried on the ground will start to float in the river when it rains and the water level rises. On May 12, the state government banned the practice of “Jal Pravah” and provided support for poor families who could not afford cremation. Relatives of a victim stand near the riverbank while the body is cremated. Photo: Getty. In many places, the police used sticks to retrieve the body from the river and called on the boatman to bring the body to the shore. After being retrieved, the decomposed bodies are buried in pits or burned on a cremation pyre. Ghazipur district judge Mangala Prasad Singh said teams had been set up, patrolling the riverbanks and cremation grounds to prevent people from dumping bodies in rivers or burying them on the banks. Bringing the ashes of unclaimed Covid-19 victims to the Ganges River Indian volunteers collect ashes from crematoriums to organize funerals for Covid-19 victims in Haridwar city.