Social activists demand that the government come up with new programmes to address the pandemic-induced new poor.
Thirteen-year-old Jagannath Rana is yet to come to terms with the loss of his father Biranchi, 45, who died of COVID-19 four days ago in Odisha’s Nuapada district.
Jagannath works as an assistant in a shop six km away from his village Mahulmunda in Khariar block, but has not been able to find some time to grieve over the biggest tragedy of his life.
He is not alone. With the pandemic triggering untimely deaths across the length and breadth of Nuapada, families are grappling over the loss of their family members as they scamper to earn their daily bread.
Biranchi, a truck driver, was responsible for taking care of his two differently-abled children (one visually challenged and another with cerebral palsy), wife and widowed sister and his four nieces.
“We depend on government welfare scheme for rice, our staple food. We have given our two acres of land to a…