Rural sector stressed as Covid-19 disrupts supplies, spikes unemployment

Crop rots in field as few want to harvest it, transporters won't take it to mandis; Few employment opportunities for labour returning to villages from cities

Deepak Sharma, a potato farmer from Sambhal district in Uttar Pradesh, is a worried man.

Just when he was trying to recover from the damage caused to his standing potato crop due to unseasonal rains in late January, the Covid-19 crisis and the nationwide lockdown that followed it has buried his second harvest as well.

“During the past three months, this is the second big blow to my potato crop and this time the situation is grim because I don’t have any window left for replanting which I could do after January damage. In the absence of labour, I will