The increased aid aims to target the poorest

Its additional funding will go towards schemes including irrigation, power, water supply and road development.

It also aims to increase access to education and healthcare, and generally improve the lives of the rural poor.

Extra focus will be put on four of the most impoverished states - Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Orissa.

These lag behind the rest of India in all social sectors.

The World Bank will lend India $2.15bn annually, in addition to $750m a year from the International Development Association, a World Bank arm created in 1960 to help support the world's poorest nations.

No electricity

World Bank assistance to India totally around $1.5bn last year.

World Bank vice president for South Asia, Praful Patel, said: "We will proactively seek to work with more states, with special attention on the states with the greatest number of poor persons"

The World Bank said one thing it would not be doing is provide budgetary support for free electricity for farmers, something announced by the new Congress government in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh.

"We don't think free power for agriculture is a good idea, not least for the environment," said Mr Patel.

Some farmers have pumped excess water when they had free electricity, depleting supplies.