“Every country has its myths, and one that successful Indians liked to indulge was a romance of instability and adaptation—the idea that their country’s rapid rise derived in part from the chaotic unpredictability of daily life. […] In India, a land of few safe assumptions, chronic uncertainty was said to have helped produce a nation of quick-witted, creative problem-solvers. Among the poor, there was no doubt that instability fostered ingenuity, but over time the lack of a link between effort and result could become debilitating.” PoorPovertyCreativityIndiaUncertaintyEnterpriseProblem SolvingAdaptationIngenuityUnpredictability Book:Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, death, and hope in a Mumbai undercity Source: Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, death, and hope in a Mumbai undercity
“But standing back to back with Sunita, it was confirmed. He was taller. As a thief, Sunil Sharma has finally started to grow.” PovertyIndia Book:Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, death, and hope in a Mumbai undercity Source: Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, death, and hope in a Mumbai undercity
“One chronicler writes of an area of India during the end of the 20th century: Almost no-one in this slum was poor by Indian benchmarks. ... True, a few residents trapped rats and frogs and fried them for dinner. A few ate the scrub grass at the sewage lake edge. And these individuals, miserable souls, thereby made an inestimable contribution to their neighbors. They gave those slum dwellers who didn't fry rats and eat weeds a sense of their upward mobility.” WritingMadeSoulEndsIndividualPoorCenturyAreasIndiaEdgesDinnerNeighborMiserableIndianGrassContributionLakesWeedTrappedRats20th CenturyFrogsResidentsMobilitySlumsDwellersSewageUpward Mobility Author:Katherine Boo
