India's enormous railway network tentatively ground back to life Tuesday as a gradual lifting of the world's biggest coronavirus lockdown gathered pace even as new cases surged.
The country of 1.3 billion imposed a strict shutdown in late March, which Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government has credited with keeping cases to a modest 70,000, with around 2,300 deaths.
But the lockdown, which enters its 50th day on Wednesday, has torpedoed the economy, snatching the livelihoods of tens of millions of people and hitting the poor the hardest. Whole industries have been devastated from tea plantations to diamond-polishing and there are fears of food shortages, while a ban on flights has left hundreds of thousands of Indians stranded abroad.
Restrictions have been steadily eased, however, particularly in rural areas, and some Indian trains - on a network which normally carries over 20 million passengers a day - resumed on Tuesday.
More than 54,000 tickets for an initial 30 services sold out online within three hours on Monday, reports said. Two trains left New Delhi on Tuesday afternoon with 2,300 people on board. Others left different cities including Mumbai.
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