Like for many Americans, home- improvement projects are on the self-
In late March, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi gave the country’s 1.3 billion people less than four hours’ warning before the lockdown started. For millions of migrant workers in India, that triggered the start of a long, desperate journey home. In one particularly horrible incident, 16 migrant workers in the western state of Maharashtra were killed when a freight train ran over them as they slept on the train tracks. As BBC explained... The dead... [were] attempting to walk to a station, from where they were hoping to get a train home... After walking for 22 miles, they were exhausted and decided to rest. According to local reports, the workers assumed that trains would not be running because of the lockdown, and therefore slept on the tracks. Images on social media show pieces of roti (Indian bread) strewn near the tracks.
quarantine agenda in Brazil, too. Ernie told me this week that he’s spending most his time visiting the hardware store buying cement, sand, and tools for landscaping projects on the farm. He also went to the local barbershop for a $6 haircut. That’s around 30% cheaper (in U.S. dollar terms) than it would have been in January, due to the decline in the country’s currency so far this year. Ernie, who’s lived much of his adult life in South America, isn’t planning on leaving Dourados anytime soon. Despite being the state’s coronavirus hot spot, it’s still a lot safer than São Paulo. Earlier this month, Brazil’s health ministry stopped publishing figures showing the number of coronavirus infections and deaths. They resumed only after a ruling by the country’s supreme courts to make the data available. This “ignore it, and it will go away” strategy of Bolsonaro is dooming millions of Brazilians. But that number may pale with the disaster in India... AS IF THE ENTIRE EASTERN SEABOARD WAS UNEMPLOYED In India, the number of coronavirus cases is accelerating, despite what Bloomberg called “the world’s toughest stay-at-home restrictions.”
For every 20 people tested in the U.S., India tests one person.
Around 122 million people in India lost their jobs in April. That’s more than the population of the entire eastern seaboard of the U.S. Since most people in India work in the informal, untaxed economy, total unemployment is probably a lot higher than the 27% reported in May. The government’s economic relief package, in the words of my investment-analyst friend Rahul Goel in Mumbai, is “tiny.”
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July 2020
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