India is right behind China as the fastest-growing economy in the world.
The country is said to have more millionaires per square mile than anywhere else on earth.
And its youthful population is predicted to overtake China's by 2050.
But life outside India's urban centres is totally different.
A government-funded report published in 2007 found that 77% of Indians lived on less than 50 US cents a day.
India is home to around a third of the world's poor and has more cases of malnutrition than the whole of sub-Saharan Africa.
The state of Bihar is one of the worst-affected areas in central and eastern India.
Government welfare programmes have lessened the plight of the very poor, but life is still a struggle for many.
An old man in rural India says life is now worse than ever.
The Manjhi family in the village of Bara in Bihar state often have no food to eat and sit listlessly outside their mud-walled home.
Father-of-three, Nagina Manjhi says that under a government scheme rural workers are guaranteed 100 days work a year. But, last year he only got ten.
"Now the farmers are using big machines," he says, "so the work is not there any more". He describes how some days he has "little to feed the family".
Rural development has often not done very much for local people.
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