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.

The killing of Chad's president this week ended a three-decade reign of power.

Now his son has taken over in what many are calling a coup.

Chad's stability matters, not least because it's a reliable partner in quelling jihadist violence far beyond its borders.

And the squishy filter feeding sea cucumber is prized in China, both in foods and in traditional medicines.

We look at the very start of a supply chain, meeting a team of Sierra Leonean divers working undercover of darkness.

But first, India reported a dark new record today, more than 314,000 new COVID infections in a 24-hour period, the largest jump by any country during the pandemic.

Heroic scenes that were predicted long ago, then seemingly avoided, are now playing out.

We are definitely overburdened. We are already working at the full capacity, rather double-off capacity.

Yesterday an oxygen leak at a hospital north of Mumbai shut down ventilators for an hour, as television cameras rolled more than 20 COVID patients died.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi remains reluctant to enact the kind of economically crippling lockdown he tried early on.

In fact, his party has encouraged in-person voting that continued today and has cheered on mass gatherings.

The rise in case numbers is truly staggering and it's not clear that the measures only now being undertaken can do much to stop it.

India has had 15 million COVID infections so far, that means it's the second worst country in the world after the United States, and right now about 40% of all global cases are coming from India as the numbers drop in the US and elsewhere.

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

But the thing is that for India this is thought to be about a 10 to 30 times undercount.

There may be as much as 30 times as many people who have COVID, and that's because testing is very, very low, particularly outside of big cities in India.

So there's a lot of anecdotal evidence of all kinds that for example, the number of people dying being buried is considerably higher than the number of people who are being officially announced as having died of COVID.

And clearly with that comes some troubling scenes playing out across the country.

Yes, I mean, it really is tragic.

...