LOFTY afforestation goals come to grief on a very mundane issue: the survival of people in and around the project area. One such is a US $30 million reforestation programme in the Chopta region of the Himalaya, funded by the World Bank. The government blamed the villagers for the failure, the villagers blamed the government and the World Bank gloated over new strains of wheat and rice that they managed to introduce in this isolated part of the world. In the final analysis, then, the villagers and the government are sadder, but no wiser. Since the Washington Post reported the story, the World bank office in New Delhi has been in a tizzy.