You are a tribal woman in the Jharkhand region of north-eastern India. Sustaining life has always been tough, but it has become harder of late. Environmentalists, obsessed by what they see as the deforestation of the subcontinent, have imposed a fuel-cutting ban in the protected forest near your village. It was bad enough for your mother, who had to spend hours bending down, hacking saplings with her small sickle-shaped daoli, but now you can only gather dry, fallen leaves or small twigs from the thorny bush you call putus. You must also go much farther afield to collect your daily...