I have pointed out before in this column the absurdity of an ICDS (Integrated Child Development Services) programme in Nandurbar district, which gave parents of starving children Rs 40 a day if they could establish in a hospital that the child was starving.

Once the child recovers and goes home, all aid stops and the child goes back to eating one meal of watery khichdi a day because his family usually has no more than Rs 10 a day to spend on food for everyone. This is only one example of the absurdity of our anti-poverty schemes.

India remains at the bottom of the list in the UNDP’s human development index but we continue to pour money into schemes that cannot work.

When these fail we resort to sops of the affirmative action kind reducing the fight against poverty to a satire that nobody quite gets but everyone knows is not at all funny.