Hats off to these guys for doing this!

http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/columns/Harsh_Mander/article2882340.ece

In a b-school undergrad class focused on Bottom of the Pyramid, students were sensitized to this exact question, through a thought experiment - do a quick calculation of daily spend (rent, food, clothing, leisure, health care...excluding tuition) to get a baseline. It came out to $60/day. There was consensus among the students that $60 seemed about right. The class got increasingly uncomfortable with the logical follow up questions...what will one need to cut out to survive on $4/day? What is the minimum one needs? How much do the homeless in the US survive on, on an average? (btw, anyone could do this thought experiment without having to do a field experiment like the dudes)

Might be wrong, but there seems to be an increasing realization even in b-schools that the real opportunities lie in tackling the wicked problems of our times. That a substantial part of the corporate world (minus the entrepreneurs) has been tweaking on the margins i.e. tweaking .ppt and .xls files. Why settle for so little? Wonder if there is something stirring within India's youth other than those amazing flash mob dance sequences. The closer to home question is whether I will ever gather enough courage to switch from thought experiments to field work.