Behind The Beautiful Forevers Analysis

The city of Mumbai has seen much growth in the past years. A string of elegant hotels have been set up for travelers and high-class business men. An ever growing, top of the line airport has been built for those coming in and out of the country. From the outside, Mumbai seems to have taken a liking to being internationally integrated with the rest of world, otherwise known as globalization. This is not the case, however; as seen in Katherine Boo’s novel Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity. This novel is set in a slum right next to the Mumbai International Airport called

Katherine Boo’s book, Behind The Beautiful Forevers, portrays the “new life” the people in India live as capitalism and globalism ventures into their lives. These two systems look to promise new and improved social opportunities for all classes, not just the wealthy. However, although this makes it seem like the government of India in the 21st century is progressing towards a more fairer society for all its citizens, the reality is, they are really not progressing at all. Of course, while capitalism and globalization initially gave all citizens, especially the lower classes, hope that more opportunities would be available to them, it seems it has prevaricated it all as these opportunities have been more transformative to the elite and privileged classes than it has for the poor.

The other two ways to get ahead in Annawadi society were corruption and entrepreneurship. (2) Abdul took the entrepreneurship route by collecting scrap plastic and metal to sell to other garbage pickers; the money collected supported the family, but often created competition between the residents. The local police sometimes even asked bribes to not harass the family, which leads to the final way to get ahead in Annawadi culture. (3) Corruption, the fuel used by those in

I believe that the community of India is hopeless. I believe this because by comparing their community to ours, there isn’t really much hope for recovery in their present situation. The poverty in India is different from the poverty in the United States. Between India and the U.S., homes, revenue, and jobs are drastically different. In the U.S., homes are bigger and are built by organization who help those who live in poverty. Those who are homeless are presented with food stamps as a way of currency so they can survive. Also for those who live in poverty in the U.S. are presented with more jobs and more opportunities than the people of India. These differences show how even though both India and the United States have similar economic difficulties, one almost has no hope of return.

The book Behind the Beautiful Forevers by Katherine Boo, addresses the corruption of a slum in India called Annawadi. Annawadi is a small, poor area in the shadows of luxurious hotels and an airport near Mumbai. The poor community struggles to make a living and hold on to a hope of one day reaching success since India is improving economically. As India is improving economically, Annawadi seems to stay the same because of the people who abuse their power and take money from the poor. People there are being held back by the unfairness that they will not be able to have a better life. Laws are not enforced in poor communities because it causes corruption in both the establishment and in the people.

While poverty continues to globally define people’s lives and morality, it is corruption that designates whether or not someone is able maintain their idealistic moral compass. In Katherine Boo’s Behind the Beautiful Forevers, Boo explores the idea that corruption in society is what forces people to abandon their beliefs in attempts to survive their venal community. In Boo’s story, she describes the Indian slum called Annawadi where the primary source of business for the slum dwellers is to sort through and collect recyclable garbage that can be sold to recycling companies. Boo describes the character Sunil, a young boy who scavenges through garbage to provide for his sister, Sunita, and himself, however, Sunil does not want to be a scavenger

Katherine Boo, a staff writer at The New Yorker and former reporter and editor at The Washington Post, has worked for over two decades “reporting within poor communities, considering how societies distribute opportunity and how individuals get out of poverty” (Boo 257). In November 2007, she and her husband, an Indian citizen, moved from the United States to India to study a group of slum dwellers in Annawadi, Mumbai (Boo 249). While studying this group of individuals in India from 2007 to 2011, Boo’s goal was to learn why the individuals within this slum have not banded together against a common enemy in order to gain upward mobility. She illustrates several common issues of developing nations including: corruption, education, the mismanagement of foreign aid, and the possibility for social mobility in her book, Behind the Beautiful Forevers. In this literary work, Boo accurately portrays the acts of corruption and as well as how corruption has entered the sphere of education, which is typically an individual’s only avenue to social mobility and success in that area. She argues that instead of rising up against a higher power, the individuals within the slum fight against one another to get a leg up on their competition, even if it keeps them in the same social class.

Behind the Beautiful Forever by Katherine Boo is about citizens trying to survive in Annawadi one of India’s biggest slums of 2008. Their slum is built on land that belongs to Mumbai airport. All of the citizens living in this slum face many struggles in their day to day lives that they must overcome to survive. In this book the Muslim Husian family’s struggles are described, they are the minority in the slum surrounded by Hindus. One family member, Abdul, is the oldest boy who helps the family with money by collecting garbage. Other boys bring Abdul different garbage they find and he weighs it, and decides what products are worth reselling to the big recycling center.

In Katherine Boo’s novel Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity we are thrown into a slum in Mumbai, Annawadi and are shown that corruption is an undeniable difficulty that the Annawadians face in their everyday lives. “For every two people in Annawadi inching up, there was one in a catastrophic plunge” (24) the people of Annawadi are in such a state because of all the corruption. As soon as they get ahead there’s someone there to remind them where they belong, living their lives barely scraping by in the slums. The corruption in Mumbai has become the status quo, denying citizens of even their basic rights making everyday life a difficulty.

Corruption can do many things. It can lead to unstable lifestyles, pollute minds and bring on the downfall of just about anything or anyone. One of the best examples would be from the story, Dorian gray by Oscar Wilde. This story showed a young Dorian living his innocent life, only to be surrounded and influenced by the corrupt society around him and would ultimately lead to his demise. It is not easy to define corruption as a whole. But to narrow it down, corruption is mainly associated with bribery and it takes many forms. Corruption has been a part of human society since the earliest times. Fraud, embezzlement, theft, bribes are all great examples. Corruption has progressively increased and is now just about everywhere in our society, the evil nature of it will only lead to failure and collapse.

According to Most of the communities in India (such as Bengali), are succumbed in 'Culture of Poverty'(a theory introduced by an American anthropologist Oscar Lewis), irrespective of class or economic strata, lives in pavement or apartment. Nobody is at all ashamed of the deep-rooted corruption, decaying general quality of life, worst Politico-administrative system, weak mother language, continuous absorption of common space (mental as well as physical, both). On the other hand looking at the corruption within the UK is much less in fact not much corruption as there are many laws and law enforcement that prevents the level of corruption within the UK

To begin with, corruption can be pinpointed in the city with people leaving the small towns only to be taken advantage of and economically hurt due to the social inequality which is rampant in the city. Next we can see that fear is also a corruption force as it forces Kumalo’s son and other blacks to resort the stealing and murdering in order to survive. Lastly was can see that Alan Paton attempts to alleviate the idea of corruption by giving hope to the readers. This hope is portrayed through Jarvis’s grandson who attempts to help the village and give them resources to better their lives. Throughout the story, the concept of corruption played a vital role in how the characters developed and acted on their

Corruption can be defined as “the abuse of entrusted power for private gain. It can be classified as grand, petty and political, depending on the amounts of money lost and the sector where it occurs.” Bribery, extortion and embezzlement are the three principle versions of corruption. For instance, an employee of a firm who is in charge of purchasing functions takes some amount of money from a supplier (bribery), in which that same employee ensures the payment for the products to be above the usual price. Then the residuary amount between the actual price and the turgid price after bribery would get siphoned off by the employee and the supplier (embezzlement). If it’s the case of political corruption, an exemplifying scenario can be, some government officials use their positions to extort payments from some government regulated firms. Expectably, economic corruption impairs development and political corruption depraves prospering governance. Unfortunately, both of these types of corruption continuously persist all around the world .

Through the analysis of the different aspects of corruption at different levels of society, it can be argued that the differential treatment of women and their lack of empowerment (2) is the cause of the greater effect that corrupt systems have on women (1).

Corruption in India is a consequence of the nexus between Bureaucracy, politics and criminals. India is now no longer considered a soft state. It has now become a consideration state where everything can be had for a consideration. Today, the number of ministers with an honest image can