Not all shared equally in the boom. In Backwater Hollow, Sharath saw dilapidated cottages, families still bartering eggs for cloth. The Lightning Line beam flashed overhead, yet these farmers lacked shoes to reach the nearest trade post.
Back in Riverbend, he convened a Prosperity Commission: economists, village elders, Sister Calliane, and (to his surprise) Duke Aldric, who admitted, "If hunger spreads, revolt follows."
Data told blunt story: regions bypassed by main boardwalk routes lagged in income, education, health. Infrastructure built wealth; absence bred stagnation.
Commission plan: Fund micro-infrastructure through Community Investment Bonds, denominated as low as one silver penny. Villagers could buy shares in their own roads, fountains, and telegraph spurs; returns paid via toll revenue and government match.
Mobile engineering teams—graduates of Technical Institute—rotated among remote districts, training locals to build and maintain. Within a year, Backwater Hollow boasted stone-lined wells, a literacy rate up twenty points, and a weekly produce caravan reaching Eldridge in half the previous time.
Sharath printed pamphlets: "Prosperity Grows Where Roads Flow." The phrase became slogan of grassroots development leagues, proving that wealth could indeed reach every valley—if citizens owned the plumbing of progress.