Soutik Biswas

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In a video message recorded in early May, a Nobel Prize winning economist exhorted millions of people living in India's villages to take precautions to prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus.

"Keep away from crowds, maintain social distancing when meeting people. Don't spit in public. If you are coughing or sneezing use your elbow or a cloth or towel," Abhijit Banerjee, who won the Nobel prize last year, says in a calm and measured tone. He is a professor of economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

"If you have cough and fever it doesn't mean you have the infection. But report your symptoms to frontline health workers. We will win this battle but it will take time."

Prof Banerjee, who is a respected public figure in his native West Bengal state, recorded eight such 2.5 minute-long public health video messages in the Bengali language from his Massachusetts home. More than two-thirds of West Bengal's 91 million people live in villages. Using the services of a major telecoms provider, he and a team of researchers from the US and India sent text messages linked to the videos to 25 million people in the state in early May.

This was not the first time Indians had received public health messages on the pandemic. By the end of March, TV, radio and public signs were spreading information, and caller tunes of mobile phones had been replaced by spirited public health messages. Celebrities were talking about the disease on news networks. People received and shared over messaging services and social media what was often less than authentic information about the disease.

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In April, a sprawling hospital in a village in western India was directed to quickly set up an additional 200-bed ward for coronavirus patients.

Infections were surging in Maharashtra state, where the 934-bed Kasturba Hospital is located in Sevagram village, some 50 miles south of the city of Nagpur. The busy not-for-profit hospital was already getting a million patient visits every year.

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When a group of villagers in India's West Bengal state recently insisted that they would hold prayers in their local mosque in violation of social distancing rules amid the coronavirus pandemic, Mohammed Nizamuddin sprung into action.

It helped that locals trusted Mr Nizamuddin. They called their wiry 54-year-old neighbour "doctor" and visited him for treatment and medicines whenever they fell sick.

Since Monday evening, Geet's inbox has been overflowing with messages from anxious followers from all over India.

Geet, who goes by her first name only, says she was taken aback when India banned TikTok and dozens more Chinese-made apps because it said they were a danger to the country.

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Illegal immigration has long been the subject of fervid debate in the US.

Now President Donald Trump is making "legal immigration a scapegoat" with an eye on the upcoming election, says Poorvi Chotani, a managing partner at Law Quest, an immigration law firm with offices in the US and India.

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In one of the world's most congested shanty towns, social distancing is not a luxury people can afford. And density is a friend of the coronavirus.

Imagine more than 650,000 people spread over 2.5 grubby sq km, less than a square mile. That's a population larger than Manchester living in an area smaller than Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens.

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More men are dying from Covid-19 than women around the world, data shows.

In Italy, China and US, for example, more men have been infected, and a higher proportion of men have died.

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"It is looking bad, very bad," says security analyst Vipin Narang, of the deadly clash between Indian and Chinese soldiers in Ladakh on Monday night.

The most serious face-off on the world's longest unsettled land border in nearly half a century left 20 Indian soldiers dead. India says both sides suffered casualties.

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Weeks after India eased what was arguably the world's harshest lockdown, and four months after its first recorded Covid-19 infection, its case number is skyrocketing.

Here's what you need to know about the crisis.

Should the spike in cases worry India?

"He might not make it tonight. Things are suddenly looking very bad," Dr Saswati Sinha told a patient's wife on the phone as she drove back to her hospital through the deserted streets of the eastern Indian city of Kolkata (formerly Calcutta).

It was the night of 11 April. India was in the throes of a harsh lockdown to prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus.