Snakes and Ladders by Gita Mehta is a book that celebrates India and its history. The author offers many short stories that attempt to show how India is trying to develop as a nation. She talks about the complex religious system, as well as the cultural diversity and corruption of the Indian government. She shows the reader many aspects of the experience of living in India, which Mehta clearly shows she enjoys, but she tries to remain neutral on the issues she discusses. When Indian nationalists revolted against the British Empire, it changed the way things were done. of life in India. This allows women to take a more active role in daily activities. Mehta's father played a very active role in the revolutions; he used his house as a hiding place for Indian nationalists. For this he was placed in prison for several years. His uncle was sentenced to seventeen years in a torture camp on various charges. Yet when asked what their worst memory was under British rule, they simply told a simple story without much meaning. Today, instead of being under British rule, the people of India are under the leadership of leaders who see themselves as the ones who drove the British out of India. However, one thing remains the same: the Indian people consider their land to be theirs, and that is what is important to them. One of the major problems facing India is the poverty of its people. India is one of the ten most industrialized countries in the world, around five million university graduates graduate there every year and they even have a more advanced space program than most European countries. Yet the Indian people continue to starve, they don't create enough jobs for all the university graduates, and despite being able to travel to space, India has an irrigation system and underdeveloped electricity networks. In the suburbs of Delhi, the author found people rummaging in garbage dumps. At first she thought they were just homeless people, but when she went to the dumps herself, she found that the people were from a higher class, but tragedy brought them here. The people in the dumps were women and children searching the dumps for scraps of iron, glass, or fabric. They would then sell these items to a contractor for cash..