In Behind the Beautiful Forevers, Katherine Boo tells the stories and struggles of families living in a slum adjacent to the Sahar Airport in Mumbai, India. Boo details the ways in which the residents of this slum, Annawadi, attempt to escape their poverty, but fail to do so. Despite numerous initiatives sponsored by the Central Government of India to improve the lives of the many individuals living in Annawadi, these programs are ultimately unable to do so due to deep-rooted corruption in the city of Mumbai. Regardless of this, the residents of Annawadi seem to accept corruption as a fact of life, and do little to fight it. As illustrated over the course of Boo’s narrative, this results from the fact that many Annawadians recognize the ways in which the laws of their society allow for the unfair treatment of certain groups of people, especially the poor and religious minorities, and are also cognizant of the fact that they have no real power to change a system that …show more content…
For all Annawadians except Asha, corruption ingrained in society prevents the impoverished citizens of a Mumbai slum from being able to become successful in life. Despite working hard, saving money, and only wanting to better the life of their family, the Husains’s story is demonstrative of the fact that an unintentional entanglement in the “great web of corruption” “in which the most wretched tried to punish the slightly less wretched” could easily lead to near ruin (Boo 115). Over the course of her narrative, Boo shows that Annawadians recognize the issues of corruption present in their society, and the fact that they lack the power to change the system. For Annawadians, the courage and aspiration to become more successful in life meant taking a gamble, and Boo shows that their gamble could only be made in a system where the odds were forced against their
In order to understand why Whitty’s argument is effectively communicated it must be noted that this article was published in the politically progressive magazine, Mother Jones. The audience of Mother Jones mostly consists of young adults, mostly women, who want to be informed on the corruptness of the media, the government and the corporate world. In order to be fully effective in presenting her points, Whitty starts her article by creating a gloomy imagery through her story of the city of Calcutta and the hard lives which its citizens live. Through her use of words such as “broken down…. Smoky streets” to describe the scene at Calcutta, she is able to create this gloomy image. She ties this gloomy story to how the population of Calcutta is the reason for the harsh living environment and how immense its population density is when compared to cities like New York. Additionally, she discusses how the increase in population has caused harsh lives for individuals in the Himalayas, the rest of India and the rest of the world. Through these examples she ties the notion that the root causes of such hard lives are because of the “dwindling of resources and escalating pollution,” which are caused by the exponential growth of humankind. She goes on to
In Annawadi, the slum setting of the book “Behind the Beautiful Forevers,” nearly everything falls under the law of the free market. Things that most countries deem “basic rights,” the Indian people of Annawadi have to pay for. Clean water, education, and medical attention from hospitals are just a few things that are exploited by police officers, gangs and slumlords. The liberalization of India caused the country to begin a process of economic reform. People from the countryside flocked to the cities to find work in the new booming economy that no longer depended on its agriculture. With the increase in population around the bustling cities, came competiveness for opportunity. This competiveness made poverty rates skyrocket, making corruption (and corrupt activities) in Annawadi the only clear way of making it out of the slums. “In the West, and among some in the Indian elite, this word, corruption, had purely negative connotations; it was seen as blocking India’s modern, global ambitions. But for the poor of the country where corruption thieved a great deal of opportunity, corrupti...
Overall, the SBS programme, Struggle Street (2015) provided a graphic insight into the hardships faced by lower-class Australians in Mount Druitt, Sydney. Nevertheless, viewing the programme allowed me to reflect and compare with my own observations of poverty within both Vietnam and Cambodia. The emotion I felt whilst watching the programme was incomparable to helplessly observing the great poverty within Cambodia.
In conclusion, the two short stories as compared and contrasted above, depict the degradation of social norms caused by poverty. The two sets of characters’ reactions to this abasement are different, and both prove ineffective attempts to overcome or cope with the situation.
While it may be easier to persuade yourself that Boo’s published stories are works of fiction, her writings of the slums that surround the luxury hotels of Mumbai’s airport are very, very real. Katherine Boo’s book “Behind the Beautiful Forevers – Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity” does not attempt to solve problems or be an expert on social policy; instead, Boo provides the reader with an objective window into the battles between extremities of wealth and poverty. “Behind the Beautiful Forevers,” then, exposes the paucity and corruption prevalent within India.
Authors Barbara Ehrenreich, and Annette Fuentes reveal the exploitation of women working and struggling to survive in third world countries in their essay entitled “Life on the Global Assembly Line.” Which was written and targeted in Ms. Magazine. Jobs in the factory and street working are the main ways of income for these women; young and old and unfortunately, it is their only choice because of government laws and because of how they are brought up and raised. In some cases, women are gaining the strength to rebel, to riot for change. These cases spread the word on their cry for help in hopes that this change they want, will one day become reality.
Nevertheless, inequality continues to be a major problem within cities and between rural and urban areas. Encompassing this situation is Katherine Boo’s novel Behind the Beautiful Forevers, which attempts to shine some light on the conditions of Mumbai’s informal settlements. Following the life of two rural migrant families residing in the Annawadi settlement, Boo highlights the everyday challenges individuals must fact to survive. As such, one of the major topics of the novel is inequality as a consequences of a lack of investment in basic needs, a matter of poor planning based on interest differences as well as corruption. Therefore, it can be argued that through her novel, Boo was able to successfully depict the how inequality has impacted the lives of those residing in informal settlements, with the fact that housing and land rights alone is an issue not being properly dealt
In the novel, The White Tiger, by Aravind Adiga the main character, is Balram, one of the children in the “darkness” of India. Adiga sheds a new light on the poor of India, by writing from the point of view of a man who was at one time in the “darkness” or the slums of India and came into the “light” or rich point of view in India. Balram’s job as a driver allows him to see both sides of the poverty line in India. He sees that the poor are used and thrown away, while the rich are well off and have no understanding of the problems the poor people must face. The servants are kept in a mental “Rooster Coop” by their masters. The government in India supposedly tries to help the poor, but if there is one thing Adiga proves in The White Tiger, it is that India’s government is corrupted. Despite the government promises in India designed to satisfy the poor, the extreme differences between the rich and the poor and the idea of the Rooster Coop cause the poor of India to remain in the slums.
In the film, “Slumdog Millionaire” showed the world how India is a society that is filled with violence and abuse. Slumdog Millionaire exposes the tragic effects of poverty in many different cities of India. The film talks about a Mumbai boy, Jamal, who grew up in the slums that became a contestant on “Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?” During the contest, Jamal were arrested under suspicion of cheating. Jamal was being interrogated by the police, and revealed events from his life history to explain why he knew the answers on “Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?”
Throughout the world, it is estimated that there may be up to 200,000 slums. These range from slums containing a few hundred to some which house as many as a million people. [Planet of the Slums: 2006: 26] It is these ‘Megaslums’, in particular the great slum capitals of South Asia which my essay will focus upon.
After seeing the acclaimed film, Amadeus, based loosely on the life of the child prodigy and great composer Mozart, the next best or potentially better choice had to be Immortal Beloved, a film focused on the equally amazing Ludwig van Beethoven and his infamous letters to an unknown lover.
The act and belief that social justice should be valued by each and every human being on this earth are absolutely essential. However; in reality, this is not the case, due to lack of equality, differences in power and the loss of value in a human life. Andy Mulligan’s 2010 novel, ‘Trash’ explores the story of unthinkable poverty, one of the many social injustice issues in this world. Mulligan personally experienced unthinkable poverty during his travels to the Philippines (where he now lives and works). As he witnessed this injustice in person, Mulligan easily applied this throughout the storyline in a very attention-worthy matter, catching all aspects and the kind of hope and determination that can transcend it.
The corruption in hospitals, where “doctors can keep their government salary and work in private hospitals”, sees people like Balram’s father die of horrible deaths every day. Dismayed by the lack of respect of the government for its dying citizens, Balram is corrupted by the fact that in the “darkness”, there is no service, not even in death. Balram also claims that “the schoolteacher had stolen our lunch money”, which was for a government funded lunch program. However, Balram doesn’t blame him, which justifies that Balram, from such a young age gives into the idea of corruption saying that “...you can’t expect a man in a dung heap to smell sweet”. In addition to his father and the school teacher, Balram is corrupted by his childhood hero Vijay. Growing up, Balram idolises Vijay for having escaped “the darkness”. However what he is ignorant of is that even though Vijay is in “the light” he is still corrupted by “the darkness”. Balram explains that “Vijay and a policemen beat another men to death”, yet he doesn’t see it as a problem, because he understand that one cannot become successful in such a corrupt system without becoming as corrupt as the system itself. It is here that Adiga asks the question of how are impoverished Indians are expected to refuse to engage in corruption when they live in such poor conditions. Thus, the reader is able to sympathize with Balram’s corruption,
“Drive the corruption from the land, don’t harbor it any longer, past all cure, don’t nurse it in your soil – root it out!” (164).
This story establishes ethos by making an emotional connection with her audience, while discussing this topic. At a young age, Fide came to her home as a helper to her family, which would undoubtedly lead most people to conclude that Fide’s family was poor, since as a child he was having to work. If that was not enough, Chimamanda’s mother verbally told her young daughter that Fide’s family was poor. This caused a picture of Fide’s poverty to be the only thing that Chimamanda thought of when Fide came to mind. Additionally, this picture of poverty was only made more vivid when Adichie’s mother said to her, “Finish your food!