The Broken Ladder
The Paradox and the Potential of India’s One Billion
Anirudh Krishna
Penguin
391 pages; Rs 499
Many books about chronic poverty in India, especially poverty in the rural hinterland, blame government apathy and the ways of the poor themselves. So we are told, ad infinitum, how the poor make bad choices such as little to no family planning, and how they push their children into labour at the cost of education.
Such books are generally penned by city-bred elites to whom such generalisations don’t just come easy but also provide the kind of simplistic faux-analysis that is of
