India has undermined a popular myth about development

Thirty years ago Siddharth Dube, a writer, visited a small village in northern India near the site of a historic peasants’ revolt. He found plenty that remained enraging: mud huts, primitive ploughs, “barefoot old men” and “bone-thin children”. One older villager, Ram Dass, recalled the bitter deprivation of his younger years, when he would work long days on someone else’s land for the meagre reward of 1.5kg of grain. On cold nights, the poor stuffed rice stalks into old clothes to keep warm. “What did we know what a quilt was?” A man was lucky to own a single pair of shoes from his wedding to his death.