Fixing the ladder of opportunity

Book review of The Broken Ladder: The paradox and the potential of India's one billion

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