<font class=UCASE><b>phulbani</b></font> <br> Access to poverty
Rabindra Nath Mishra, an additional block development officer, is a bit worried. He thought calculating Phulbani's poor, as directed by the Supreme Court, would be easy. The expenditure limit of Rs 250 per month (as the decisive line between poverty and prosperity) seemed a ridiculous amount. But when the final count came, he was shocked: 65 per cent of the district's population was below the poverty line. "I can't explain why there is so much poverty,' he asks.
The answer to Mishra's question waits outside his office. Meet Biswambar Kanwar, a resident of Gochapada village. He sells fuelwood. "The more the distance of forest from my village, the less prosperous I become,' says Kanwar. His village survived on forests