When India's history of the quarter-century is written, the last seven days of August 2020 will probably go down as one of its most dismal periods.

This was the week when the vast and densely populated nation reported a global record in the daily rise in coronavirus infections and an economy that contracted by nearly a quarter in the April-to-June period from a year ago. The bad news came amid reports of fresh Chinese military incursions on the Himalayan border, where the world's largest standing armies are in a tense face-off.