April 17, 2017 | Pulitzer Center
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As Yardain Amron traveled around Chhattisgarh investigating the complex roots of migratory brick bondage, for the more well-off, the root was quite simple: the bonded themselves. Caste oppression, landlessness, lack of employment, and other external conditions were non-factors. The problem was an internal mindset: what one wealthy village secretary neatly summed up as "poor thought"; or as his first translator, Bharti, unexpectedly put it, "Their bad habits...If they get some money, they will spend it on drinking. They won’t work. Only when they need money will they work." For others though, it's this very mindset, or stigma of the poor, that is the deeper root of poverty. The implications are enormous and extend around the world.