infrastructure

I am currently in Hyderabad, India for reasons which I don't really need to explain on the internet. Anyway, I'm realizing that a lot of my opinions about fixing third world infrastructure were a bit naive. I'm beginning to understand that even attempting to solve the simplest problems in a country like India is much, much more complicated than I initially thought with my idealistic notions about solving world poverty etc.

I'm too tired to really talk about it now, but here's one example:

There is a lot of trash by the side of the roads in India. You could say the government should put up more trash receptacles. The problem is that many people on the streets are homeless and have no reason to throw trash in receptacles. Laws couldn't be enforced. To really effectively solve the trash problem in India, which seems like a simple infrastructure problem, you'd really have to solve Indian poverty first and homelessness, which requires solving unemployment, etc etc etc (etc etc etc).

Nothing is simple.

It's very discouraging. I thought volunteer work would be all sunshine and rainbows. I'm realizing that was a very youthful notion.