India is set to become one of the four most dominant international economies by 2050 along with Brazil, Russia and China (known as the BRIC countries). However, India's miracle economic growth, showing an 8% rise in GDP for the last four years, presents a paradox. It is all too easy to forget that the country is home to the largest number of poor people in the world: 380 million Indians live on less than a dollar a day.

India's social indicators remain poor. The United Nations Development Report for 2006 paints a depressing picture. The report ranks the country 126th out of 177 countries in terms of social development.

Human development and healthy community life depend on access to education, income, security, availability of resources (food, water, healthcare) and an environment free of violence. The following facts underline why Veerni's work in rural Rajasthan is vital.

• India's population is 1.129 billion, representing one sixth of humanity, with one third of the world's poor
• Only 42.2% of married women use a modern method of family planning
• The fertility rate (average number of children a woman has in her lifetime) is 2.8, in Rajasthan 3.21

• 380 million Indians live on less than $1 per day
• 58% of India and 72% of rural India does not have access to piped drinking water
• 64% of India and 69.2% of Rajasthan does not have access to basic sanitation

• 20% of children aged 6-14 do not attend school
• In rural Rajasthan less than 5% of women are literate

• Nearly 50% of Indian women and 66% of Rajasthani women are married before they reach 18
• Girls who marry by 15 often have 4 children by their early twenties

• Over 47% of children suffer from malnutrition
• 2.8 million people in India are HIV positive
• Nearly 80,000 women die each year of pregnancy related deaths
• Around 1/3 of all adult women are underweight

• Preference for sons and a profound bias against girls has led to one of the world's lowest women to men ratios: 927 women for every 1000 men
• The risk of dying between the ages of 1 and 5 is 43% higher for girls than for boys
• 3 to 5 million female foetuses are aborted each year