It is an irony that some of the poorest districts in India are simultaneously its wealthiest. If that sounds contradictory, let us take the case of the mineral-rich western region of Odisha, in which almost 90 per cent of the population in three districts — that’s as many as 1.2 million families — is steeped in poverty. Little, if at all any, of the exploited mineral wealth contained in the region trickles down to these people, Ashoo Gupta writes in the Business Standard
