Corruption as a Difficulty in Everyday Annawadian Life

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

In the book Behind the Beautiful Forevers, author Katherine Boo sheds light on the topic of corruption. Corruption is something that is seen everywhere, but varies in depth. She chooses to focus on India, because she is fascinated with how so many people are impoverished while others prosper. Boo is able to convey both the benefits and downfalls of corruption within a community by deciding to only focus on a sliver of people from a single slum. She chooses to focus on the citizens from a slum called Annawadi due to sense of possibility in the community. Boo decides to watch this community for several years to see who gets ahead, who doesn’t,

Tulia, a small town in Texas of just under five-thousand people, is a frightening example of how the judicial system is governed solely by racism as well as one corrupt man’s word. In 1999, nearly ten percent of the town’s African American population was arrested in a single drug bust. Of the forty-six people arrested, thirty-eight were African-American, furthermore all were convicted. The remaining seven arrested where know to associate more with the black community than the white in Tulia as well. With the towns income levels averaging at or below the poverty line, most arrested could not afford to hire a good attorney that cared or had the time to care, left therefore with one provided by the state. Consequently, convictions were up to ninety years in jail for allegedly selling three and a half grams, more commonly known as an eight ball, of cocaine in drug-free zones. In was only on appeals, that the convictions where revoked on insubstantial evidence.

The Progress movement or as many refer to as the Progressive era, was a time frame where Americans joined in varying groups to advocate reform across the United States. To elaborate, Progressives believed in widespread change for child labor, industrialization, government, racial reform, and women’s rights. Countless stories of corruption in these areas were brought to light in the Progressive era mostly due to the published writings of Muckrakers. Muckrakers, were journalists who wrote for popular magazines that attempted to expose corrupt political activities from their investigative journalism. Furthermore, I will discuss and compare these groups and their attempts for changes in the rights of child labor, women, acknowledgment of corrupt government practices, racial relations, and industrialization reform.

The government makes one of the biggest contributions to the welfare of the family by providing financial safety. The problem is that the government fails to show any concern for these families unless it is brought to their attention, and even then nothing is changed. The lack of interest by the housing authorities leads to the neglect of Horner for over fifteen years. “The rotting carcasses explained the putrid odor rising from the Riverses’ toilet. It wasn’t aborted fetuses, as LaJoe had though. It was dead animals, the stench of rotting flesh rising through the pipes” (Kotlowitz 241). The government leaves the projects to fend for themselves, which increased the communities’ turmoil. If the government and the people worked together, more problems could be solved.

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.

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.

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.

Mike Davis, author of Planet of Slums, predicts the direction in which the world’s cities are headed, and how the changes in living conditions are only going to deteriorate if certain trends continue. The title of his book explains Davis’s vision for the future of cities as he feels there is enough evidence pointing towards an exponential rise in slum populations across the world’s largest cities. Additionally, he expresses his opinion on many issues regarding the rapid rise in developing cities’ slum populations, although he offers very one-sided arguments geared towards those who feel the current system is causing more problems rather than improving current conditions. This causes Davis to overlook the problems of slums as resolvable through different modes of assistance such as international aid programs. Instead, he views aid programs as the root cause of imbalance created during industrialization. Throughout the book, Davis presents information that confirms his preconceptions towards the slums. Therefore, all the evidence that is presented by him portrays confirmation bias as Davis fails to mention anything about the resolution of the problem of the growing number of slums and instead sees this problem as unavoidable. Particularly, Davis’ writing, although intended for the general population, is more geared towards critics who have similar ideas. Instead of providing the means through which the economy could be improved and the problem of slums could be resolved, it is

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.

When first hearing the words bribery, extortion, lubrication and subornation, one might first think of money or ways of getting more of what you ant for a cost. Corrupt practices in business transactions are a great distress business industry, especially when it becomes the international business market. These corrupt practices include bribery, extortion, lubrication and subordination. Extortion, lubrication and subordination are different variations of bribery. Money in today’s society is what keeps the world running in most cases. Bribery first came about in the fourteenth century by the works of Chaucer and his contemporaries (Quinion, 1). In the fourteenth century the worst often offenders were judges and public officials, who exhorted

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 is the use of public office for private gain, the use of official position, rank or status by an office bearer for his own personal benefit. (Khandu) Corruption can come in different forms, like bribery, extortion, cronyism, nepotism, patronage, graft and embezzlement. (Paper) Corruption can be a major obstacle in the process of economic, political, social and environmental development and in modernizing a country. (Myint) Corruption can also affect people’s health, income inequality and poverty. This essay will talk about the underlying causes of corruption, its consequences, and why corruption is a problem for countries and its people.

Corruption is a topic of interest and concern in academic circles, in the media, among people of different professions, within the civil service, among members of parliament, politicians, government officials, members of the business and financial communities, students, foreign investors, and so on. In other words, the term corruption is not new to Bangladesh.