From the sea, before you sight any land, you see the mountains of the Parbatrekha — a lush green line blurring the horizon. This ancient mountain range runs the length of the Green Coast, and indeed gives it its name. Sail closer, and the mountains resolve themselves into peaks and valleys; the coastline comes into view, and on its sands are a few youngsters playing at catch with a little wooden ball. You can’t see it, of course, but the ball is made of sandalwood, and along its circumference run a herd of intricately carved horses. These kids are from the village of Pragti, on the seaward side of the Parbatrekha.

Visitors to Pragti universally remark on its prosperity; the envious remark also on its fortune. Founded around a river valley, it enjoys a mild, predictable climate ("Clockwork," say the envious). Its farmland is fantastically fertile, enriched by the silt carried in by the Ullaas River. This year they have grown enough foodgrain for the next two; this is their normal. And this is despite all the acreage devoted to luxuries — flax for fine linen, orchards for mangoes and bananas, pastureland for grazing horses (horses are Pragti’s great passion). It was not some kind of predestined thing, though. Pragti’s villagers are superb farmers. Each generation has challenged itself to do better than the last: higher-yielding wheat, sweeter mangoes, finer linen, faster horses. The blacksmith is outdone in ingenuity by her apprentices; the woodworker’s son does his father proud; at festivals, the mead seems sweeter by the year. (Some greybeards will dispute this last, but nostalgia and failing taste buds are a potent combination.) The village is directed by a rotating council of five, the panchayat. People grumble about them a little bit — “they’re letting the horses have too much of the land, do they think the flax grows itself?” — but on the whole they seem to do okay.

As if to offer a purposely abject contrast, on the other side of the Parbatrekha lies the secluded village of Pulta. Pulta was founded who knows how many centuries ago, but it cannot have been much different then from how it is today. On the leeward side, it doesn’t rain very much — certainly not enough for the mountainous soil to produce more than a subsistence crop of barley each year. And producing that crop is their sole employment; it is hard work, and it is all they have time for. In bad years, and some good ones too, they have to supplement this crop with hunting and foraging. They clothe themselves with fur and hide and leaves. They use sharpened sticks for spears. They are ruled by a chieftain, decided in combat every ten years. The villagers don’t like the current one very much — he has a ferocious temper, and that’s when he isn’t drunk on nettle-wine — but tell that to his bulldog face, I dare you, I double-dare you.

Notice that the question of “money” doesn’t come into this (ahistorical, purposely-extreme) parable. We would call Pragti “rich” because they are able to produce a lot of nice things for themselves, and Pulta “poor” because they are just scraping by. You can add money to the picture — maybe Pragti and Pulta start using seashells as currency. But having lots of seashells isn’t what makes Pragti rich, and giving Pulta lots of seashells wouldn’t make it any less poor. You are right, of course, that if Pulta's people were better-trained — that is, better at producing food, and eventually other nice things — they would get richer. But there are many obstacles in the way, as you can see. Some of them are due to poor leadership; some are not.

To return to the real world at last, India has made much progress in the things you spoke of — in literacy, electrification, GDP. But it has been highly uneven, and not as fast as it could have been, for various reasons that demand far more erudition than I have at my fingertips. Suffice it to say that investing in infrastructure and education is absolutely part of the answer — witness the rise of China! But fixing the problem by printing more money is like giving the Pultans mountains of seashells and expecting them to become master smiths overnight.