Acclaimed worldwide, Everybody Loves a Good Drought is the acknowledged classic on rural poverty in India. Three decades after publication, it remains unsurpassed in the scope and depth of its reportage, providing an intimate view of the daily struggles of the poor and the efforts, often ludicrous, made to uplift them.

The Indian poor are too often reduced to statistics. In the dry lan­guage of development reports and economic projections, the true misery of the hundreds of millions living below the poverty line gets overlooked. In this thoroughly researched study of the poorest of the poor, we see how they manage and what sustains them. The people in this book typify the lives and aspirations of a large sec­tion of Indian society, and their stories give a glimpse into the true face of development.