Shontish Hansda, a poor 35-year-old villager, lies on the ground outside his small thatched hut desperately trying to draw in some fresh air on a sultry summer afternoon.
Ever few minutes, the bony farmer from India's communist-ruled West Bengal state, who is suffering from tuberculosis, breaks into a hacking cough and weakly waves a hand to shoo off a cow.
"I have no money. I got some medicines from the village government some time ago. But they say I have to have nutritious food to fight tuberculosis. I cannot afford it," says Hansda who lives in Mirjapur, before he's overtaken by a bout of coughing.
Hansda is one of 250 million people in India who live in desperate poverty with an income of less than a dollar a day and no access to wholesome food, basic health or drinking water.
While a small slice of India is rich enough to eat out, drive new cars and shop for luxuries at glitzy malls, millions in the vast, impoverished countryside are still struggling for survival.
"Poverty is an acute problem in India. Some states are not attracting investment and poverty is getting entrenched in more backward areas," said Arun Kumar, professor at New Delhi's prestigious Jawaharlal Nehru University.
It is this abject poverty that the ruling Congress party's finance minister, Palaniappan Chidambaram, will try to tackle when he unveils the federal budget on July 8. The job isn't easy.
Last month, a few hundred miles away from Hansda's village in the state which has the world's longest surviving communist government five people died because they had nothing to eat.
Starvation deaths are often reported in rural areas where nearly 70 percent of the country's more than one billion population live, despite 8.2 percent GDP growth last year.
While consumerism is on the rise in the many shopping malls that have sprung up since an economic reform drive was launched more than a decade ago, in some villages people are sometimes forced to eat rats and toads to survive.
A review of the Indian economy published by a private think-tank says India has more poor households than Africa, Asia and Central America together.
The World Bank say malnutrition remains a "silent emergency" in India as almost half of all children under five are malnourished and 34 percent of new-borns are underweight.
The new left-leaning government - elected chiefly by the rural poor rather than urban middle class and rich - has vowed a new deal to the farmers and has promised to increase spending on health to at least two-three percent of GDP over the next five years and on education to six percent.
"What we lack is proper targeting of pro-poor schemes, cutting down bureaucratic hurdles and a clear roadmap for reforms," says Ajitava Raychaudhuri, professor of economics at Jadavpur University in the eastern city of Calcutta.
The lives of farmers like Hansda living in remote villages in West Bengal typify the extent of poverty.
"He has two children and a wife. He does not have a job. Earlier, he worked in the fields but now he is too ill to do anything," say some villagers gathered outside his hut.
A short distance from Hansda's hut, some women gathered around a fire to roast some puffed rice for a local festival.
"What else can we afford? We eat this puffed rice and some boiled potatoes," says Leela, a woman who looks older than her 50 years, as she watches the potatoes boiling in a worn-out aluminium pot.
Only a few houses have access to electricity in Mirjapur village, 130 km (82 miles) from the bustling state capital, Calcutta, where bright red hammer-and-sickle symbols adorn the walls of most huts.
The vast majority make do with lanterns or home-made lights made of cotton dipped in kerosene. A few hand pumps are the only source of water, while most women and children wash in the muddy water of the village pond.
"We have done rural development but it does not mean that we have been able to eliminate poverty. We also have the same faults as in other states," says Nirupam Sen, a senior minister in the West Bengal government.
"There are faults in the delivery of pro-poor schemes. Just because we are communists it does not mean we have a foolproof system."
The communists are key supporters of the new government led by the Congress party which swept to power in May after angry voters who felt left out of an economic boom voted out the previous government led by the Bharatiya Janata Party.
The communists, who took power in 1977 in West Bengal, undertook widespread farm sector reforms to redistribute land equally between rich landlords and landless peasants in a bid to increase productivity.
Sen points to the fragile fiscal situation of the state and the huge burden of pension and salaries - about 120 billion rupees ($2.63 billion) a year - and high interest payments which leaves little money for key social sectors.
But the argument doesn't cut much ice with people such as Sushil, an unemployed man who lives in a thatched hut in Mirjapur without any access to electricity and barely large enough to accommodate his wife and two children.
"I vote but I don't understand politics," he says, sitting outside his hut, when asked whether he had heard about the pro-poor promises of the new government.
"I am only worried about my children and wife's future."
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