A Different Kind of Recession - HBS Student Reflects on Visit to India
zacharyclayton.com
zacharyclayton.com
Not only happiness, but truth is relative for people. Exploring boundaries (like travelling) is the only way to be able to better position and evaluate standpoints on any subject.
The minds natural tendency to zoom in must be countered, consciously and regularly. For us, (I assume the people in Dharavi are not reading this) this can also definately be source of happiness and a way to set your focus on the right kind of things in your life.
Yes you can live a depressed life in California and you can also live and work in a slum and be happy. But I don't quite agree with the point that constant reminders of a skyline, TV etc in anyways dampen their spirit or make them less happy, on the contrary I think it motivates them. The relative differences show these people what they can be or want to be. I know of slums in other Indian cities as well, not many of them can boast about "running an industry" or the number of television sets as compared to dharavi(the one in Mumbai). What is evident is that in the more developed and prosperous cities, the happiness quotient of people in slums is generally higher as compared to slums in other less-developed cities.
That being said, I am not suggesting that prosperous cities lead to better slums. In fact there isn't a larger difference between the rich and poor anywhere in the world than there is in Mumbai. Poverty needs to be tackled and there are a lot of NGO's working towards this. All I'm trying to say is that the relative difference these people see around them does not make them feel less happier, it's a reality they live with and aspire to reach.
I recently got back from India and I didn't make it into Dharavi. One thing that I found though is the fact that India didn't get the Memo that there is a world recession going on.
They are still building and expanding like crazy. On one Island I was they where building 3 new dive shops...
I mean that was your first reaction, right? After reading the post the voice inside told you "gee, I wish he picked another title, I better post a comment about it?"
And by the way, I found the title perfectly fitting and clever: we can bitch and moan about deteriorating US roads and infrastructure, about property values in California going down by 41.3% all we want, but that's far from another, raw meaning of "low".