It’s now likely that the pandemic has, as feared, moved out of urban areas into India’s vast, and crowded, rural hinterland. Here, health services will be far less equipped for a surge in cases — and a distant state machinery itself may not know of localized outbreaks till it is too late.The government,faced with a crashing economy and with its cupboards completely bare, has no real way to directly improve the welfare of those most affected. Programs like Britain’s furlough scheme or the U.S.’s $600 per week unemployment aid are a distant dream in India.