Contrasting pictures of rural India

in a special issue by knowledge@wharton and Wall Street Journal Rural India.
The Upside of Recessions
The rural poor fare better in India than China says John Lee India's Rising Tide . In Merging Policy with Practice to Help India's Poor ; "In the subtext of India's recent economic success story lies "the stubborn statistic of 400 million to 600 million people living in poverty," according to Shanta Devarajan, chief economist of the World Bank's South Asia region....
Ravi Kuchimanchi, founder of the Association for India's Development (AID), a volunteer movement with 50 chapters in the United States, India and Australia, resists the characterization of pro-poor policies as "subsidies"; rather, in the course of being implemented they become "exploitation." He pointed to the roughly 140 special economic zones being planned across the country, which have triggered controversies over farmlands being acquired to make way for new construction. "The incentives are going to the companies who take the lands from the exploited people," he said.

According to Kuchimanchi, another such "exploitative" program is the government's "Aanganwadi" initiative, which aims to provide basic health care across the country's villages. Funds earmarked for the program are routinely diverted to local officials' personal coffers, and investigations that result from complaints have been a sham, he said.

Devarajan cited additional problems plaguing health care among the poor. India's immunization rates are below those of Kenya, he said. "You expect the public sector to deliver this, but only 8% of such spending goes to the poorest sections. The doctors and nurses are frequently not available; the average absenteeism among doctors is 40%, and this goes up to 60% in Bihar," a northern Indian state. Devarajan said he saw no solution but to "restructure employment policies" and enforce accountability among doctors.

The same level of accountability should hold for teachers, Devarajan added. "Everybody, including the World Bank" takes credit for getting 93% of Indian children in some form of primary school, he said. However, "60% to 65% can't read a sentence in their [native] language, and 55% can't do a two-digit subtraction problem." These statistics came to light two years ago in surveys conducted by Pratham, a nongovernmental organization in India. The surveys found a "high degree of absenteeism among teachers in public schools," from 25% to 40%, Devarajan noted."

There is an interview with Professor Anil Gupta of Honey Bee Network
discussed earlierhere .
India Defies Slump, Powered by Growth in Poor Rural States saya Peter Wonacott, but K. Seeta Prabhu thinks otherwise in How the Financial Crisis Threatens the Rural Indian Boom .
There are some on money at the bottom of the pyramid, micro finance etc which I have not read yet. I found this initiative interesting: Aakash Ganga: Saving Water for a Rainy Day .