The Underdevelopment of Bharat A 31-year-old man from the nearby village is scrounging for food, clothes, and coins to provide for his family. His drunken behavior, rag-like clothing, half-shaven face, and hungry eyes glare out into the busy streets of the city. He watches as the young, foolish, innocent, and inexperienced lawyer, fresh out of grad school, takes the job that should have been his. Did I mention this man sitting on the curb passed law school with perfect marks, glowing recommendations, and in-field experience but was turned down because his family was poor and from a lower caste? This man is the victim of the poverty epidemic in India. Poverty is still prevalent in India because various requirements by society and government restrict the options for third-world citizens who are job-hunting. Villagers are the most affected as government, caste, and industrialization take over their lives. India’s government should support its villagers by improving environmental standards, overcoming social obstacles, and maintaining economic relations because these citizens have the most difficulty obtaining a sufficient job as the restrictions are detrimental to job creation.
Economics, Environment, and Ethics India is considered the largest yet poorest democracy of the world due to the lack of support given to the poor and job creation. The government attempts to support the villagers by providing products like rice, grain, sugar, cooking gas, and water from government
During the film, the subject of poverty was actively depicted. Even though this issue has raised great concerns for India in the past, statistics show that this problem has gradually decreased. In 1978 the percentage of people living on less than $2
“Poverty is the worst form of violence.” Mahatma Gandhi’s words still ring true in today’s society. Poverty is nothing to sweep under the rug or put on the back burner. While many statistics state that poverty is decreasing, other sources state the opposite. Poverty is a hot topic in the U.S., foreign countries, and speaks true about many genders, ethnic groups, and children.
Promises not Kept: Poverty and the Betrayal of Third World Development by John Isbister is a balanced, penetrating, and exciting account of why most people on the planet are poor, who has betrayed the promise for social change, and what we can do about it. Isbister gives a superb overview of third world development. He challenges people in developed nations to accept their share of responsibility for Third World stagnation and examines and analyzing international development issues. Promises not Kept offers provocative answers to the question of increasing world poverty.
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.
Poverty hits children hardest in the world. When I was younger, the Armenians had faced the hard facts of poverty after they break up with the Soviet Union, war with Azerbaijan, and a devastating earthquake. My family moved into our motherland Armenia while our nation was going through these huge dramatic changes. Furthermore the poor economy and inflation destroyed numerous hopes and futures. In the novel, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, by Sherman Alexie, Arnold Spirit, describes his hardships involving poverty living on Spokane reservation. The people on the reservation are stuck in a prison of poverty. They are imprisoned there due to lack of resources and general contempt from the outside world, so they are left with little chance for success. Like Arnold, I also went through hardships regarding poverty and education.
The streets roared with loud car horns as my parents and I walked down the polluted sidewalks. It did not matter how far I walked or what part of the city I was in, I’d always see homeless men, women, and children were all around. Those who were not already passed out from starvation held their hands out to us, to me, in desperation. The looks in their eyes told stories of pain and loss. Yet they lived on, clinging to life, waiting patiently for the next rupee. “Don’t stare at them,” my mother commanded. “But why? We have change, let's give them some!” I demanded. “If we give to one person, all the others will come, and we don’t have enough for everyone,” she responded. Her brutally honest words lingered as I helplessly walked past the crowds. This experience not only taught me how fortunate I was, but it also made me want to fight harder. To fight for all the people who could not fight and to one day give them a voice-a chance in our unfair hierarchical society so that they too could be self-sufficient and pursue their own endeavors. I was determined to make a sustainable
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 existence of poverty is to commonly overlooked and denied by many. This is true when you or a friend have probably walked by a beggar and gave him/her nothing. You think he does drugs or you think he drinks but in reality he might have just made one mistake and there was no one there to help him back up. This chain of having no money is a factor that can destroy one’s self reputation. Poverty affects the health and education of those below the line of
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 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.
The problem of persistent poverty is a complex one that includes communities and individuals who, through no fault of their own, find themselves unable to make ends meet in this world. Large numbers of the nation 's citizens live at or below the poverty threshold, which means each month is a struggle to pay the bills and provide the basics, including food, clothing, and shelter, not to mention access to health care and simple comforts. Unfortunately, today it seems the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. The gap between the economically secure and the poor is becoming so large and will only increase without an attempt for solutions. The hardships of living in poverty and the ways that those in poverty find solutions to their daily problems are followed through two different, yet similar texts. In Barbara Ehrenreich’s, “Nickel and Dimed”, she explores what it is truly like to live as a poverty stricken individual in America. Contrastively, in Sudhir Venkatesh’s, “Gang Leader for a Day”, he finds himself in the middle of a community that has been abandoned by state.
India is a country in central Asia with a population of over 1.22 billion people making it the second most populous country in the world. Its high population is one of the factors that results in India having such a high poverty rate. In India today over 37% of the population live below the poverty line. The reality of such a statistic means that these people live in conditions unimaginable to people of the western world. In the film Slumdog Millionaire by director Danny Boyle deeper ideas associated with this poverty are developed including destiny, loyalty and how poverty frees us. These deeper ideas are developed through visual techniques
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.