It was summer, the eve of the monsoon, and the land around Biharipur in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh was blazing hot. A few fields glistened in the midday sun, their crops covered with water from the landlord's whirring irrigation pump. But most of the landscape, as far as the eye could see, was bone-dry, Dalit land waiting for the monsoon to decide if the coming year would be one of comfort or hunger. Inside the village, there were only modest improvements to the 100 or so huts. A few brick walls.
Some new cement rooftops.
Nothing that could be mistaken for public action. There were no sewers or drains in the village, no health facilities, no signs other than a painted wall telling couples to stop at two children. About the only public investment Biharipur could claim was a battered dirt road that led from the village to the railway tracks two kilometres away. Even the road's future was in doubt, threatened by a monsoon that could wash it away and flood the village with disease. On the surface, little had changed in Biharipur since I first came here in 1993.