Delhi, 1286 kilometers

Rama Gosh and her friends are preparing the first demonstration Dhanwe village in Northeastern India has ever seen. They plan to march and sing in front of the local government office.

What makes these women so upset?

This is what poverty looks like in India:

The Indian poverty line is at 32 INR (0,40 Euro) per day for rural areas.*
 
Enough to have some rice and lentils, but not enough to buy a single vegetable, to pay school fees or health costs.

22% of all Indians (or 52% of all Indians in rural areas of Jharkhand where the women live) are considered poor by these standards.

* This correlates with the World Bank’s poverty line of $1,90 (1,69 €) when adjusted for purchasing power.

To understand India’s inequality, we wanted to know from poor people what they would like to ask the rich, and vice versa.

Everybody blames someone else:

- The Woman’s Federation blames the ration shop dealer and see a conspiracy on the block level.
- The dealer blames the local government.
- The leader of the village council (Panchayat) acknowledges the shortcomings. He thinks that dealers and traders have taken their share of the rice, because the central government has not provided them with another incentive to sell and transport the rice.

What happened?

Of course Prime Minister Narendra Modi does not hand out the promised rice directly to Rama Gosh and other people in need.
The government buys the rice from large farmers and keeps it in huge storage facilities, from where drivers transport it to so called Fair Price Shops in the villages – supervised by the state, block and local level officials who hand out ration cards to every family below the poverty line. Before Rama Gosh gets her share from the ration shop, a lot of players can branch something off.

And some of them do – hence the mysterious disappearance of 1 kg per person and month.

That is why Welthungerhilfe and its partner organization train communities to map their village, identify the poorest people and apply for development aid that they really need.

And the government started to look and listen.

The local government equipped Dhanwe village with 7 wells within 2 years - in places where people really need them.