Surprised to see no mention of the book Greening the Desert by Rakesh Hooja, given they appropriated the title for this article.

The book is a deep look into a successful permaculture endeavor in India. It talks about all the hard parts related to permaculture. That is, not the planting, not the irrigating, not the carefully lunar-timed execution of the pagan cow-horn-manure fertility ritual, but the social and political factors involved in getting a lot of different people on board with a long-term, large-scale, and risky agricultural project.

A dry, kind of boring read, but useful.