Towards Green Villages Economists have to redefine poverty not as a shortage of cash but as a shortage of biomass resources to meet basic survival needs. Gross Nature Product is more relevant than the Gross National Product.

The fundamental cause of poverty in India arises out of the scarcity of biomass resources to meet daily basic needs like food, fuel, fodder, manure, building materials and artisanal raw materials, almost all of which are biomass based.

The key objective of rural development programmes must be to restore ecological balance and increase biomass production on a sustainable and equitable basis.

Since India's landmass is made up of extremely diverse ecosystems, biomass productivity can be increased on a sustainable basis only if rural development programmes were to become ecosystem-specific. Each rural settlement of India must have its own clearly and legally defined environment to protect, improve, care and for use. That is the only way India can become rich and green.

— Extracted from Towards Green Villages, A Strategy for
Environmentally Sound and Participatory Rural Development, CSE

An appeal in the very first issue of Gobar Times, May 1998.