What You Don't Want Is Always Going

I Was Spending A Lot Of Time In Mumbai After I Met My Husband, Who Is Indian, And While Parts Of The City Were Prospering Like Crazy, I Couldn't Quite Make Out How The New Wealth Had Changed The Prospects Of The Majority Of City Residents Who Lived In Slums. So After A Few Years I Stopped Wondering And Started Reporting.

As A Reporter, You Know The Tropes Of How Stories On Poverty Work In Any Country. A Reporter Will Go To An Ngo And Say, "tell Me About The Good Work That You're Doing And Introduce Me To The Poor People Who Represent The Kind Of Help You Give." It Serves To Streamline The Storytelling, But It Gives You A Lopsided Cosmos In Which Almost Every Poor Person You Read About Is Involved With A Ngo Helping Him. Our Understanding Of Poverty And How People Escape From Poverty, In Any Country, Is Quite Distorted.

My Job Is To Lay It Out Clearly, Not To Give My Policy Prescriptions.very Little Journalism Is World Changing. But If Change Is To Happen, It Will Be Because People With Power Have A Better Sense Of What’s Happening To People Who Have None.

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'm Useless When I Meet Writers I Love - I Go Slack-jawed And Stupid With Awe.