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The remains of a funeral pyre in a sugarcane field in the village of Basi, Uttar Pradesh, India, on May 10. — The remains of a funeral pyre in a sugarcane field in the village of Basi, Uttar Pradesh, India, on May 10.
Photographer: Anindito Mukherjee/Bloomberg

‘Entire Families’ Wiped Out by Covid’s Carnage in Rural India

Citizens say they’ve been left by the government to fight the pandemic alone.

By

Sudhi Ranjan Sen,

Bibhudatta Pradhan,

Shruti Srivastava, and

May 17, 2021, 9:00 PM UTCUpdated onMay 18, 2021, 4:58 AM UTC

After devastating India’s biggest cities, the latest Covid-19 wave is now ravaging rural areas across the world’s second-most populous country. And most villages have no way to fight the virus.

In Basi, about 1.5 hours from the capital New Delhi, about three-quarters of the village’s 5,400 people are sick and more than 30 have died in the past three weeks. It has no health-care facilities, no doctors and no oxygen canisters. And unlike India’s social-media literate urban population, residents can’t appeal on Twitter to an army of strangers willing to help.