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AFP
New Delhi
India’s enormous railway network tentatively ground back to life Tuesday as a gradual lifting of the world’s biggest coronavirus lockdown gathered pace even as new cases surged.
The country of 1.3 billion imposed a strict shutdown in late March, which Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government has credited with keeping cases to a modest 70,000, with around 2,300 deaths.
But the lockdown, which enters its 50th day on Wednesday, has torpedoed the economy, snatching the livelihoods of tens of millions of people and hitting the poor the hardest.
Whole industries have been devastated from tea plantations to diamond-polishing and there are fears of food shortages, while a ban on flights has left hundreds of thousands of Indians stranded abroad.
Restrictions have been steadily eased, however, particularly in rural areas, and some Indian trains -- on a network which normally carries over 20 million passengers a day -- resumed on Tuesday.
More than 54,000 tickets for an initial 30 services sold out online within three hours on Monday, reports said.
Two trains left New Delhi on Tuesday afternoon with 2,300 people on board. Others left different cities including Mumbai.
The government has not set out a programme for a timetable beyond May 20.
There were limited special train services laid on after the lockdown was imposed to ferry home some of the millions of poor migrant workers left jobless and destitute by the shutdown.
Many people, however, were forced to walk hundreds of miles to get home. Some died on the way, including 14 workers crushed by a goods train in Maharashtra last week.
Passengers in face masks or handkerchiefs over their mouths queued outside New Delhi station on Tuesday, waiting to be screened for coronavirus symptoms.
Ajay Dewani, a photographer stranded in Ghaziabad with a ticket for Chattisgarh state said he walked for four hours to get to the station.
“I haven’t been paid for two months and my landlord was hassling us for rent,” he told AFP, carrying a backpack and pulling a wheeled suitcase.
But Usha, a labourer from Madhya Pradesh state, said she and husband and their two children were turned away because they had no ticket.
“We came here to the railway station as we were told that the trains will start working from May 12,” she told AFP.
New Delhi
India’s enormous railway network tentatively ground back to life Tuesday as a gradual lifting of the world’s biggest coronavirus lockdown gathered pace even as new cases surged.
The country of 1.3 billion imposed a strict shutdown in late March, which Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government has credited with keeping cases to a modest 70,000, with around 2,300 deaths.
But the lockdown, which enters its 50th day on Wednesday, has torpedoed the economy, snatching the livelihoods of tens of millions of people and hitting the poor the hardest.
Whole industries have been devastated from tea plantations to diamond-polishing and there are fears of food shortages, while a ban on flights has left hundreds of thousands of Indians stranded abroad.
Restrictions have been steadily eased, however, particularly in rural areas, and some Indian trains -- on a network which normally carries over 20 million passengers a day -- resumed on Tuesday.
More than 54,000 tickets for an initial 30 services sold out online within three hours on Monday, reports said.
Two trains left New Delhi on Tuesday afternoon with 2,300 people on board. Others left different cities including Mumbai.
The government has not set out a programme for a timetable beyond May 20.
There were limited special train services laid on after the lockdown was imposed to ferry home some of the millions of poor migrant workers left jobless and destitute by the shutdown.
Many people, however, were forced to walk hundreds of miles to get home. Some died on the way, including 14 workers crushed by a goods train in Maharashtra last week.
Passengers in face masks or handkerchiefs over their mouths queued outside New Delhi station on Tuesday, waiting to be screened for coronavirus symptoms.
Ajay Dewani, a photographer stranded in Ghaziabad with a ticket for Chattisgarh state said he walked for four hours to get to the station.
“I haven’t been paid for two months and my landlord was hassling us for rent,” he told AFP, carrying a backpack and pulling a wheeled suitcase.
But Usha, a labourer from Madhya Pradesh state, said she and husband and their two children were turned away because they had no ticket.
“We came here to the railway station as we were told that the trains will start working from May 12,” she told AFP.
