So far, what has slipped out of the pages of newspapers and on television channels is a series of numbers—each trying to get a fix on the number of poor Indians. How many? How much? Is it 77 per cent or 28 per cent? From time to time, empirical data has been sought to peg numbers to social security schemes, however flawed that may be. Mander puts a face to the data to show the futility of splitting hairs over the poor. The battle against hunger is unlike other battles, where there is a victor and a vanquished. Here, the enemy—that is, hunger—stalks all those who have fallen through the cracks of India’s economic growth. It preys on them and wears them down till their struggle to hold on to life comes to a halt. But nobody is ever held accountable for their deaths.