India, April 3 -- It is 10 am in late March, the sun beginning to sear the skin. In a tattered vest, 31-year-old Jageshwar Korram whistles loudly as he washes his clothes at a government handpump. Around him are scattered homes, far apart as they often are in the forests of Bastar, and evidence of calm domesticity. A few metres away from Korram, children titter as they play hide and seek, weaving past a woman who has set off on her Atlas bicycle for the closest bazaar.

Korram is content. But this contentment comes not from development or any real sense of upward mobility - the village of Mohla has 25 tribal and six Other Backward Classes (OBC) families, nearly all of them still living off the subsistence their small land holdings provide...