As the economy grows, so does the suffering.
PUNJAB, India – Three days after her mother died, Rajinder Kaur sat quietly on the edge of a rope cot, staring at her sandaled feet as the buzz of her friends and family filled the courtyard of her village home in Sher Singh Wala in rural Punjab.
The 20-year-old nursing student, with a girlish frame and long black braid, listlessly recounted the details of her mother’s last 40 days – from a sudden diagnosis of blood cancer to the unaffordable treatment that left Kaur with few options but to watch the pillar of the family suffer in the hospital until she passed away.
Kaur’s mother, who died in May, is among the latest casualties in India’s northern state of Punjab, home to the highest rate of cancer in India. Here, in the country’s breadbasket, 18 people succumb to the disease every day, according to a recent report published by the state government. There are ninety cancer patients per 100,000 people compared to the national average of eighty. And the Malwa region, where Kaur’s family lives, has been dubbed "the cancer belt" of the state because of its particularly high incidence of the disease.
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