3.2 Aspirations, Mindsets and Development
The aspirations of a society are conditioned by its circumstances and history, but they
also determine its future. There is scope, then, for a self-sustaining failure of aspirations
and economic outcomes, just as there is for ever-progressive growth in them (Appadurai
(2004), Ray (2006)).
Typically, the aspirations of an individual are generated and conditioned by the experiences
of others in her “cognitive neighborhood”. There may be several reasons for this: