I'm Useless When I Meet Writers I

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.

Rich Indians Typically Tried To Work Around A Dysfunctional Government. Private Security Was Hired, City Water Was Filtered, Private School Tuitions Were Paid. Such Choices Had Evolved Over The Years Into A Principle: The Best Government Is The One That Gets Out Of The Way. The Attacks On The Taj And The Oberoi, In Which Executives And Socialites Died, Had Served As A Blunt Correction. The Wealthy Now Saw That Their Security Could Not Be Requisitioned Privately. They Were Dependent On The Same Public Safety System That Ill Served The Poor.

I've Said It Before And I'll Say It Again: Never Trust Anyone Who Tells You How People Come To Trust Them.

We Often Have An Exaggerated Sense Of What Nonprofits And Governments Are Doing To Help The Poor, But The Really Inspiring Thing Is How Much The Poor Are Doing To Help Themselves.

.. Becoming Attached To A Country Involves Pressing, Uncomfortable Questions About Justice And Opportunity For Its Least Powerful Citizens.