The school in the hamlet of Bagraha in Chitrakoot district has three rooms, but these are built only in name. There is dried mud in place of a floor, the walls are unplastered, and there are no windowpanes. A fan hangs in one room and some electrical fittings were put in place about a year ago. But the electricity line never came to Bagraha. The teacher comes irregularly from Karbi, about 65 km away.

The doctor is not in, at the hospital at Nehri, a village in the adjoining district of Banda. Till about two-three months ago, villagers remember, a homeopathic doctor would come down from Allahabad on Saturdays. Now, there is only a chaprasi who doles out medicines, and a Basic Health Worker to take care of deliveries. For more sophisticated medical care, Nehri residents must travel to Naraini (16 km) or Banda (50 km) by bus with no fixed timings.

Nehri and Bagraha cock a snook at official accounts of the state of health care in the region that base themselves on numerical counts of dispensaries/ PHCs/ beds per lakh of population in Bundelkhand. Or, similarly, assess educational infrastructure in terms of schools per lakh of population. Since the districts that fall in Bundelkhand have a remarkably low density of population — the region has 280 persons per square km as opposed to the Uttar Pradesh average of 690 per square km — the conclusions can often be dramatically misleading.

Nehri and Bagraha are joined to each other by more than just their capacity to punch holes in the official development narratives. Both were briefly hauled out of their invisibility last year when Rahul Gandhi chose to visit this village and this hamlet on his most high-profile touchdown so far in Bundelkhand.

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