The Impoverished
 The numbers tend to get you. 1.2 billion is a lot of people. The number of people that live in abject poverty easily exceeds the entire population of the US. We left the hotel at 5am while the city was still sleeping and it was much more apparent just how many people live on the streets. The medians, the sidewalks, the parks and ditches…all littered with people, some on blankets, most not. The rickshaw drivers slept on their bikes, truck drivers on the roof of their cab. Many of the people I had assumed went home at the end of the day did not have a home. Entire families would be stuffed onto a cot that sat under a tree in a empty patch of dirt…this was their home, this is where the kids would grow up, without even shoes on their feet. The surroundings can be surreal at times. An elephant is parked next door, cows graze on a few weeds popping out of a crack in the asphalt, a man w alking on all fours, yes, all fours, begs for money. This isn’t a rural scene, this is a busy road…a scene in front densely packed buildings. Roadside fences are covered with clothing and occasionally an open urinal attempts to keep as much human waste off the public areas as possible, but sanitation is largely sacrificed. Regulation of any kind seems to be largely sacrificed. Electrical junction boxes can be seen with live wires prodding out. Buildings that look like they will collapse are home to dozens. There are many small boxes, about 3 ft by 3 ft, raised off the ground with a few bricks…each is someone’s workplace, an example of the most basic form of entrepreneurship. The small walls are lined with gum, candy, and who knows what else, but each has an owner who miraculously crams themselves inside and waits for a sale in the searing heat. In a sense, India is full of entrepreneurs born from need, doing whatever they can think of to survive.
|
To our readers:
We appreciate your comments, so please leave substantive comments related to entrepreneurship or the blog entry to which you are commenting. We love to receive personal comments by email!
For many entries we have provided our geographical coordinates. Cut and paste these into the Google Earth search field and hit enter to see exactly where we are!
External Links:
|
