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Coronavirus: Lalitha, 1 of 260 million Indians sliding back into poverty
- It took 10 years for India to lift more than a quarter of a billion people out of poverty. Thanks in part to the coronavirus, a similar number are falling back
- About 122 million Indians have been forced out of jobs since the country began its strict lockdown
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Due to the scorching heat and the long journey ahead, R. Lalitha considered leaving her bagful of possessions back with a friend in Mumbai, India’s commercial capital. The bag had a bedsheet, some jackets to wear underneath a sari, two balls of wool, two plates, some spoons and some old newspapers. Apart from the meagre physical possessions, Lalitha had just 7,500 rupees (US$100) in her bank account.
Lalitha was returning to her native village in the southern Indian state of Andhra Pradesh, after she and her husband lost their jobs as construction workers.
“I cannot believe this is all we have left after five years of living in the city,” she said. “When we came here, we had 120,000 rupees (US$1,500) in the bank.”
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Lalitha sees her experience as a riches to rags story. “Living in Mumbai was a mounting expense for us,” she explained. While the couple felt well off, most of what they earned was spent. Every month they sent money home, to the village where her children live with her parents.
Lalitha and her husband are among the 260 million Indians expected to fall into poverty due to the twin crises of the coronavirus and a tanking economy, according to estimates from the United Nations and the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative, as told to Huffington Post India. India has recorded more than 332,000 cases of the coronavirus but data scientists suggest these numbers could nearly triple in the next month to hit more than 800,000.
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