Let us focus on poverty too as we pursue broader ambitious goals

We must address deprivation that persists even as India makes progress in other economic spheres

- ANURAG BEHAR

Indu said there is no forgiveness, referring to herself and then to the rest of us. Fifty years after growing up around those places, she was back.

About two and half hours’ drive from the airport where we landed, we stopped at a viewing point, which could have been made only by someone with a sense of the grotesque. It was a panoramic view of a deep gash on the earth—two thousand feet deep and a few kilometres both in width and length. Dust suspended permanently in the air from the digging that was continuing at the bottom by massive earthmovers and excavators, all of which looked like ants from our height and distance.

Thirty minutes further, we had to leave our cars. Only bikes could go on that path off the road. Isat pillion ona Bullet after a few decades. The mud slipping under the tyres, the loose rocks scraping or the underbrush directly below where there was no path. We had to leave the bikes after four kilometres and walk up the hillock for another kilometre. Even in October, we were drenched with sweat.

Wesat in the long veranda of the decrepit school. Twenty people from the village of 52 households and us. There were no children in the group; we saw a few later, one ill in delirium and some playing. And no elderly in the group, because “everyone dies before 50”. None seemed taller than five feet two inches, their thighs as thick as our arms. A glance enough to show you hunger, if you are willing to see. No need for research on nutritional status.