The multi-billion-dollar fuelwood trade is the last resort for India's poor
As ecological degradation leads to the loss of livelihoods from agriculture and forests, some 11 million desperate people in India eke out a living collecting and selling fuelwood. It might be time to stop viewing the trade as a threat to our forests and to set about organising it and weaving it into our national forest policy instead
Can loans eradicate poverty?
Do loans actually help ease poverty? If one were to go by the results of the World Bank-supported District Poverty Initiatives Project in Rajasthan, it would seem not
Living through the great drought
Yana Bey travels through the poverty-stricken Kalahandi-Bolangir-Koraput region of Orissa, meeting villagers with long memories of hard times and starvation
Growth sans development
Policymakers never fail to make a connection between the rate of economic growth and the apparent fall in poverty levels in the '90s. But the rhetoric is at variance with reality. The total number of poor has actually increased substantially in the decade following liberalisation