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The article focuses on a scheme developed by the Congress party of India known by its Hindi acronym NYAY under which it will hand out 6,000 rupees to poor households in the country if it wins power in the 2019 national election. Topics covered include action taken by the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to address rural resentment, failure of the government to identify the poor and possibility for NYAY to become a reality in line with the electoral prospects of Congress.

The author argues that the schemes adopted by competing political parties, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Congress party, to give money to poor people in India, need rethinking due to the difficulty of identifying the poorest in the country. Topics covered include number of people in India who live in extreme poverty, outcomes of the schemes launched by the Indian government to help the poor, negative effects of the BJP and Congress' schemes and the cost of eradicating poverty in India.

The article discusses the trend towards microlending in India. Topics discussed include microloans offered to small entrepreneurs which can be repaid once their businesses start to make profits, the aim of microlending to help people get out of poverty, and a comparison of active microfinance borrowers in several Asian countries.

The article questions why poor democracies are not better at ending poverty. India, unlike China, is a vibrant democracy with a proudly robust habit of turfing lousy governments out of office. Yet, in poverty reduction, at least, China's unelected leaders have done better. A book by Bimal Jalan, a leading Indian economist and former governor of the central bank, lists some of the woes afflicting Indian politics, such as the rise of small parties, the dwindling of inner-party democracy and the shrinking role of Parliament in ensuring accountability. In poverty-reduction, as in growth, India is typical of other developing-country democracies, having achieved steady but not spectacular success. The relationship between caste and class helps explain the wide regional discrepancies in India.

Focuses on the threat to the livelihood of stonebreakers in Uttar Pradesh, India from the Forest Department. Rights of the Kols tribe to mine stone into gravel in the area; Statement of forest officer Biswajit Banerjee that the soil in the area is not useful for planting trees; Way that the land used by the Kols has been cordoned by the Forest Department for forestry purposes; Problems of poverty and disease among the villagers.