As COVID funeral pyres burn, India's rural economy goes up in smoke

FILE PHOTO: A farmer feeds iceberg lettuce to his buffalo during a 21-day nationwide lockdown to slow the spreading of coronavirus disease (COVID-19), at Bhuinj village in Satara district in the western state of Maharashtra, India, April 1, 2020. REUTERS/Rajendra Jadhav/File Photo

Satara, INDIA (Reuters) - Having watched his father's funeral pyre burn by a river bank close to their farm last month, Indian sugarcane grower Dattatray Bagal and his brothers had to set aside grief to count the financial cost of the coronavirus's impact on their family.

They had hoped to buy a tractor for the small farm in western Maharashtra state, but the brothers spent all their savings on hospital treatment for their father and three other family members who survived. "The hospital bill was 820,000 rupees ($11,191). It not only exhausted our savings but also forced us to borrow from relatives," Bagal said as he irrigated the fields in the farm below the mountains of the Western Ghats.