Sukhomajri was a dirt-poor village in Haryana. It started pulling itself out of its hole in the late 1970s, making a dizzying ascent to prosperity built on the regeneration of its natural wealth--forests and water--in the following decades. It succeeded because it had a village institution with the autonomy and power to make decisions. All that started falling apart when the forest department intervened, robbing the village of resources and initiative. Its condition is thrown into relief by the success of Bunga, a village 30 km away, which emulated Sukhomajri but staved off state depredation. Autonomy creates spaces for development. That's the lesson supriya singh learnt in Haryana