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Stranded and hungry in India’s lockdown

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Migrant workers who were turned back from a bus meant to take them back to their villages on Sunday in New Delhi.Credit…Adnan Abidi/Reuters

The effects of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s restrictions on movement, affecting some 1.3 billion people in India, are coming into view, as the country’s most vulnerable populations struggle to eat or to find shelter, and get punished for it.

Hundreds of thousands of migrant laborers have begun long journeys on foot to get home, having been rendered homeless and jobless by the lockdown measures. More than a dozen have died in the process.

With businesses shut down, many of the millions of migrants who had moved to cities to find work, and often lived in their workplaces, were trying to return home. They planned, in some cases, to walk hundreds of miles — until they were beaten back by the police. There are no clear plans by the government to bring migrants home.

And the country’s homeless population — one of the largest in the world — is deeply struggling, with many people not knowing about the coronavirus until they are ordered off the streets by the police; some said they had been beaten by officers for being out in public during the nationwide lockdown.

Shelters and soup kitchens are overwhelmed; religious institutions that normally feed the homeless are closed; and aid workers warn that the situation may deteriorate into violence if people continue to go without food.

Quotable: “You fear the disease, living on the streets — but I fear hunger more, not corona,” said one migrant working in Delhi who was trying to return home, which was 125 miles away.

Here are the latest updates and maps of the pandemic.

We also have a daily tracker showing the virus’s trajectory by country and U.S. state, as well as a look at where Americans have been urged to stay home.

In other developments:

  • Iraq is asking for donations to weather the pandemic, as oil revenues, which its government depends on, have plummeted.

  • New York State reported its largest one-day increase in deaths: 237 people. The projections could mean thousands more die. New York City, its epicenter, has only a week’s worth of medical supplies, Mayor Bill de Blasio said.

  • Moscow declared a lockdown starting Monday, limiting residents to essential activities within 100 meters of their home.

  • President Trump walked back threats of a lockdown on New York, New Jersey and parts of Connecticut where outbreaks have exploded. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention instead issued a travel advisory for those states.

  • Spain’s elderly populations are suffering in the country’s devastating outbreak. And horror stories from nursing homes, where some people were abandoned, are shaking the nation’s self image — particularly in a country that prides itself on public health and its respect for family bonds.

  • Rich Europeans are fleeing for their second homes amid the virus, hoping for beaches or mountains to ease their confinement, at the risk of local populations with fewer doctors compared with major cities.

The Times is providing free access to much of our coverage, and our Coronavirus Briefing newsletter — like all of our newsletters — is free. Please consider supporting our journalism with a subscription.

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Two women having dinner in an otherwise empty restaurant this month in Beijing, where eateries have reopened but people are still too afraid to frequent them.Credit…Gilles Sabrie for The New York Times

For much of their lives, many young Chinese people have been content to give up political freedoms as long as the ruling Communist Party upheld its end of an unspoken deal — providing jobs, stability and upward mobility.

Now, the virus has exposed the limits of that trade-off. Young people are pushing back on the party’s missteps and its blind spots in the financial slowdown caused by the outbreak.

And if the pandemic sets off a global recession that saps demand for Chinese goods, resentment may build.

The details: Increasingly, young people are speaking out and organizing protests to demand compensation for the effects of the outbreak. Some build “cyber-graveyards” to compile news and commentary that was censored elsewhere. Others organize donations for overwhelmed health workers.

Quotable: “These recent events have made some people see more clearly that criticizing their country does not mean they don’t love their country,” a 34-year-old Beijing resident said.

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The work of Preda Foundation is focused on alleviating the physical, emotional, psychological and sexual abuse and suffering of children and preventing abuse through community education and social media.

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