Even NYT estimates the real numbers might be 10x reported, and I would also expect that to be a reasonable estimate. Roughly a quarter of the people I know tested positive in the past month, it's not possible with such a high infection rate only 3000 people die in a day.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/24/world/asia/india-coronavi...

The UK peaked at ~1200/day, with a population 1/20th the size. That's "only" 24K scaled up, looking at India now it's hard to picture things as being only a bit worse than the UK peak.

My guess is that for a lot of processes, crematoria included, capacity is not some fixed number below which everything is fine and above which the backlog piles up.

It's like my parents' restaurant, you can get busier and busier without there being a wall. When you "hit capacity" you find you're doing many things that you weren't normally doing, like being open a lot longer, asking for longer shifts from staff, rationing things that you wouldn't normally ration.

>From what you've said, it could be that crematoriums were already operating just below capacity and are now just above capacity, causing growing backlogs even with only a very small increase in demand.

Can't be the case throughout the country in all affected districts and all densely populated states.

You see reports of crematoriums running 24/7 and still not able to fulfill the demand for cremations and find it reasonable to land on any other conclusion but people are dying. I think I've presented enough.