Hello and welcome to the Intelligence on Economist Radio.

I'm your host, Jason Palmer.

Every weekday we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world.

Before the pandemic, there were about a million species in danger of extinction.

Now many of them are under even more pressure.

We look into the causes of a troubling rise in wildlife poaching.

And researchers have long had a dream of using optical tricks to see around corners.

It's not easy, but the technology is coming along and a new experimental setup has taken pictures around a corner that's a kilometer and a half away.

First up though.

A new wave of COVID-19 is washing over India. On Sunday there were more than 68,000 new confirmed cases, the highest it's been since the first wave in the autumn.

On the same day began holy the festival of colors.

Indians tossed brightly colored powder and water balloons at one another to mark the beginning of spring.

But this year's celebrations were decidedly more subdued than usual.

So far more than 12 million people in India have been infected with the coronavirus and the number of deaths has topped 160,000.

The fatality rate has been lower than expected, but the speed of infections this time around has people worried.

And while the country's vaccination program is underway, inoculating such a huge population will be a mammoth task.

It's slowly sinking in that this is a full on second wave of the virus.

Max Rodenbach is our South Asia bureau chief and is based in New Delhi.

What's different this time from India's first wave is the numbers going up really quickly, but also it's very uneven.

So large parts of the country haven't really felt the wave yet, but big cities and parts of India that are exposed to the outside world are experiencing this wave pretty full on right now.

And what's the reason behind this sudden spike?

I think his first peak was in September when briefly India had more new cases than any country in the world.

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