India’s government has made a habit of letting its own people down.  With an election looming on the horizon, meaningful reform has given way to pandering populism.  Rather than taking steps towards an economic environment in which people can afford food, the government has decided it would be best to hand out food to the […]

The Indian canvas has been painted with such starkly contrasting hues that it can at times swerve into the realm of irony.  Billboards and buses are plastered with signs advertising extra classes for students, in advanced subjects ranging from computer science to chemistry; yet a third of the country cannot even read said signs, as […]

Traveling through rural India on a motorbike during the monsoon season is not pleasant.  Sharp rain drops hamper visibility, ubiquitous potholes and depressions become lakes and rivers, and tires kick up sheets of mud with each acceleration.  For farmers, though, the steady rains are a boon.  This year’s harvest is likely to be more fruitful […]

The sleepy, dusty town of Uruli Kanchan came alive yesterday, awash in pageantry and humanity as an estimated million Hindu pilgrims strolled through on their way to Pandharpur, approximately 200 kilometers away.  Propelled perhaps by dogmatic devotion to tradition, the mostly elderly lot will continue their journey for two weeks, stopping for food and water […]

In the 1940s, Mahatma Gandhi approached Manibhai Desai with a quandary that had been troubling the spiritual leader of the nascent nation: Why is India so poor? Desai, an expert on sociological issues in India, replied that the answer lied in the persistent poverty experienced by the millions living in rural India.  Gandhi therefore implored […]