
After the CII meeting, I happened to drive through a Delhi village less than half an hour away from where we spent two days discussing poverty and sustainable development and this is what I saw. Modernity trying to survive ancient decay. Shops selling expensive electronic goods on the edge of drains thick with slime, new clinics buzzing with flies, and all along the village high street, large mountains of rotting garbage the putrid stench of which filled the air. Few countries in the world look this bad.