Character Analysis Of Annawadi

This can be seen in the novel with Abdul’s father, who suffers from tuberculosis. Diseases like tuberculosis are common in the streets of Annawadi and numerous slums just like it. This makes it hard for Abdul’s father to work which means he can not make money to support his family. This is a common problem in many slums for many families who have members suffering from disease. Another problem is the upper class that dwells within Mumbai. While the upper class is the minority class in Mumbai, they control close to all of Mumbai’s profits saving it all for themselves and not helping those in need. The fact that such a small percentage of Mumbai’s inhabitants controls a large percentage of its wealth is major reason why so many poverty stricken people were forced to live in slums like Annawadi. A third reason for the poverty of Annawadi can be seen in its slum lords. The slums lords have total control over a slum and its inhabitants. If a person crosses paths with a slum lord, they are as good as dead. This fear of the power of slum lords keeps the people down and makes it almost impossible to rise out of poverty. In Behind the Beautiful Forevers, Katherine Boo writes “A decent life was the train that hadn’t hit you, the slumlord you hadn’t offended, the malaria you hadn’t caught” (Page 45). These are all factors in why Annawadi faced such severe poverty. It is easy to say that these all had an effect on Annawadi’s absence

One of the protagonists and main characters in the story Hamadi, by Naomi Shihab Nye, is a girl named Susan. She is a 14-year-old freshman in high school, who lives in U.S, Texas. She is reaching the point in her life where she starts to question her surroundings and the world, which leads her to an interest in a family friend, Saleh Hamadi, who’s an old-fashioned man and very wise. She is a complex character in this story because she has many different relatable traits, has many thoughts and relationships in the story and changes throughout the story.

The word ASHA means hope in Sanskrit and her organization helps support those with mental illnesses internationally. Every year she is a key-note speaker at conferences such as NAMI- National Alliance on Mental Illness (Ramprasad).

One citizen in particular that thrives due to the corrupt system is Asha Waghekar. Asha comes from a childhood of rural poverty, and when she sees the opportunity to become part of the middle class, she takes it. However, this route is not the most noble of routes. She turns to political corruption in order to come out on top, and hopefully someday become Slumlord. Asha starts down her path of corruption, when she decides to start helping her neighbors solve their problems. She believes that “when she ha[s] real control over the slum, she could create problems in order to fix them … she’d learned [this] by studying the Corporator” (20). Asha’s way of thinking allows her to not only overcome the corruption in Annawadi, but become entrenched in it. She sees the good in this, because it allows her to skip all of the usual steps to make money. She is also able to reason it to herself, she states “[h]ow can anyone say I am doing wrong when the big people did all the papers—when the big people say that it’s right?” (228). Some people are able to reason corruption, in order to allow them to feel okay with it and Asha is one of those people. Fortunately for Asha, she is able to become one of the most powerful people in Annawadi. Therefore, Asha is able to use corruption to allow her to get ahead and take advantage of powerless individuals. Corruption is able to improve the lives of the

Despite the many attempts to eliminate poverty, the problem has never been solved. Even though these efforts have helped lower the numbers of people becoming poverty-stricken every year it the numbers still seems to progress. In the novel Behind the Beautiful Forevers Author, Katherine Boo brings a different perspective. Boo takes the reader into the Annawadi slum of Mumbai, India. The Slum was presented a jumbled, filthy and impoverished area hidden from the view of westerners and better-off Indian citizens beyond the concrete wall. Her Novel Serves as a snapshot into the lives of the impoverished people of Annawadi and a great comparison to poverty lines in America. In this essay, I will compare the way that Katherine Boo has presented the miserable lives of those in the slums and the poverty-stricken in America today.

Farah Ahmedi wanted a life free of war. Aengus was desperate to find his true love and Walt Masters was motivated to save a man's claim. Whether if it was one's determination to find love or determination to save one from danger, Farah, Aengus, and Walt all worked hard to succeed at their own goals.

(1) Education, while not popular for slum residents, was a way to move up the social caste system. This is also seen in developed countries; educated residents are able to enter career paths with more opportunities, higher salaries, and greater prestige. Manju, the daughter of Asha, was attempting to complete her education at a local women’s college. If she completed this education, she could marry someone in a higher social caste and escape the slum. Her mother Asha often discouraged her because it violated the social role of women; women should be married off and serves as servants to their husbands. If Manju were able to complete her education, she would be Annawadi’s first female college graduate. Nevertheless, it is difficult for a person to receive an education when structural conditions do not allow. At one point in the story, Manju has to stop teaching the local children to assist her mother in ripping off a Western nonprofit- Asha was running a fake kindergarten program.

The government also promises to the poor, better schools and hospitals. Balram’s father died because there was improper medical care in their home town, and the life expectancy in India is only 66.8 years. There are nearly 1,189,172,906 people in India and only 61% of the people living in India are literate. In New Delhi, though, the government does fulfill its promises to the rich. They live unaware and uncaring of the slums surrounding their middle class lives. The government makes promises of better livelihoods to its people that are never fulfilled; causing India’s poor to remain in the slums and the government to have little understanding of the problems poor people face.

Poverty and oppression is a serious condition that is prevalent even in today’s modern society. Women and children are exposed to poverty and subjected to a life of injustice. One of the countries where such problems still occur is in India. Despite the country’s modernization, there lies an undercity where the disparity of wealth is transparent. These social problems are thoroughly described in movies and literature such as Slumdog Millionaire and Behind the Beautiful Forevers. In the book Behind the Beautiful Forevers by Catherine Boo, the author describes slum life for a set of individuals and the hardship that their social conditions confined them to. Another movie that gave insight to slum life in India is Slumdog Millionaire

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.

Throughout the entirety of the novel, Marjane Satrapi’s growth as a person seems to be a highlight that is almost as intriguing to track as the plot itself. Her loss of innocence and personal change can be linked to growing up within an environment of unrest and struggle. In regards to this idea, the character of Marjane Satrapi symbolizes a coming of age theme. Her relationships with surrounding characters, and experiences throughout her life heavily influence her perception and who she grows up to be.

Many describe poverty as an economic deprivation, or lack of income. However, this alone does not incorporate the different social, cultural and political aspects of this unfortunate reality. Poverty is not only a deprivation of economic or material resources but a violation of human dignity. The general scarcity, lack, or the state of one without a specific amount of material possessions or money. It is a versatile concept that may be defined as either absolute or relative. Time and again, poverty is a call to action, for the poor and the wealthy alike, it is a call to change the world so that many more may have enough to eat, adequate shelter, access to education and health, protection from violence, and a voice in what happens in their communities.

Thousands of individuals are living in poverty. Why is it that this worldwide dilemma is still rising in rapid numbers till this day? Is it because of a lack of authoritative power, or a lack of one’s self control to do good? Despite the unknown cause, it has managed to drastically affect the lives of many. Poverty is like a curse, one that is wrongfully placed, difficult to get out of, and resistant to many forms of help.

It can be seen that there are a multitude of reasons that the poor tend to remain poor. Reasons ranging from the spending patterns of the poor to the health and nutrition of the poor all attribute to the creation of a poverty cycle that seemingly condemns the poor to being poor. Obviously this isn’t a rule of thumb but rather an accurate observation, it is not to say that the poor can’t become affluent but rather the conditions and environment that surrounds those who are poor severely impedes their ability to earn an income and move over the poverty

The book ‘Poverty with Many Faces: a Case Study of Malaysia’ by Ataul Huq Pramanik is one of the results of the hard works that elaborate the issue significantly both in theoretical and practical perspectives. The author is a distinguished economist who has a sound background both from conventional and Islamic perspectives with a special expertise in development, distribution, poverty and public policies. In this book, the issue of poverty and deprivation faced by the individual is discussed to a great extent based on the multi-dimensional factors that are believed to contribute to the