India's Farmers Benefit From Better Roads, Which May Help Singh

For three decades, Lahu Bhiwa, a rice farmer in India, loaded his crop onto an ox cart and sold it to families in his village, earning about 2,000 rupees ($32) a month. His life changed in 2010, when bulldozers cleared the way for a paved road linking Kainad, where he lives, with the western coastal town of Dahanu. The asphalt road turned a three-hour journey by foot along a dirt path into a 25-minute car ride. That’s meant quicker and more frequent travel to Dahanu to buy fertilizer, seeds, and other supplies, and access to bigger markets and more buyers.

Bhiwa, whose monthly income has tripled to 6,000 rupees since the road was built, now sells to the highest bidder and checks benchmark prices on a mobile phone bought with the extra money he’s earned. “Our life has completely changed for the better ever since this road was built,” he says.