The living conditions of slum-dwellers are way too miserable that it sounds like a long way away story or even a hypothetical scenario. It is hard to imagine what it is like to live in the slums without actually visiting and observing it. However, not everyone gets the opportunity to have this experience; and thus, the best replacement would be to read Katherine Boo’s Behind the Beautiful Forevers. Throughout her book, Boo proves that the poor blame each other for every problem and that the rich also blame the poor for the faults in their governments and the markets. She proves this by examining the daily problems that the slum-dwellers face: poverty, diseases and corruption.
Boo specifically looks at the lives of people in the Indian slum …show more content…
Abdul makes living out of collecting garbage and his hard work has brought a relative prosperity to his family. However, economic envy leads to a conflict between his family and Fatima, the one-legged woman who lives next door. Diseases and physically disability are another daily problems that dwellers of Annawadi face. Abdul’s father, Karam, is no longer able to work because he is sick. Kalu, who is a homeless thief, suffers from tuberculosis. Furthermore, Sunil is stunted and Fatima only has one leg. These residents do not have the access to health care because it has not been fully universalized yet. Lastly, political corruption is shown through characters such as Subhash Sawant, who lies about his caste in order to qualify as an elected official, and Asha who wishes to become the slumlord so that she could earn dirty money. Corruption is also evident in the criminal justice system of India. Abdul, his sister, Kehkashan and Karam are wrongly convicted of harming Fatima. Asha collects money from her poor neighbors and Fatima accuses Abdul’s family for the harm that she has done to …show more content…
However, their situations rarely get any better. This is because of the duplicity of countries with fast-growing economies. While the poor people reside in slum huts that are covered with rats, mosquitoes and garbage, the rich people reside in luxurious hotels and condominiums. Moreover, while children like Sunil are stunted due to malnutrition, leftover food is dumped everyday at the hotels. Therefore, the main message of this book is that instead of blaming one another for all the suffering that they are going through, they cooperate to come up with a solution to the horrendous reality of the gap between the rich and the poor. They should also cooperate to request for redistribution and to achieve reformations such as universalization of health care.
Boo does an excellent job of making her book sound interesting, making the nonfiction work easy to follow along. She provides detailed descriptions of objects such as garbage, which make the readers able to have a vivid imagination that allows them to feel empathy. However, although Boo’s book provides a detailed story on the lives of the slum-dwellers, it lacks a comparison target. Boo could have interviewed people who live outside of the slums because this would have been helpful to the readers in figuring out the level of inequality through measurements such as the Gini
Boo specifically looks at the lives of people in the Indian slum …show more content…
Abdul makes living out of collecting garbage and his hard work has brought a relative prosperity to his family. However, economic envy leads to a conflict between his family and Fatima, the one-legged woman who lives next door. Diseases and physically disability are another daily problems that dwellers of Annawadi face. Abdul’s father, Karam, is no longer able to work because he is sick. Kalu, who is a homeless thief, suffers from tuberculosis. Furthermore, Sunil is stunted and Fatima only has one leg. These residents do not have the access to health care because it has not been fully universalized yet. Lastly, political corruption is shown through characters such as Subhash Sawant, who lies about his caste in order to qualify as an elected official, and Asha who wishes to become the slumlord so that she could earn dirty money. Corruption is also evident in the criminal justice system of India. Abdul, his sister, Kehkashan and Karam are wrongly convicted of harming Fatima. Asha collects money from her poor neighbors and Fatima accuses Abdul’s family for the harm that she has done to …show more content…
However, their situations rarely get any better. This is because of the duplicity of countries with fast-growing economies. While the poor people reside in slum huts that are covered with rats, mosquitoes and garbage, the rich people reside in luxurious hotels and condominiums. Moreover, while children like Sunil are stunted due to malnutrition, leftover food is dumped everyday at the hotels. Therefore, the main message of this book is that instead of blaming one another for all the suffering that they are going through, they cooperate to come up with a solution to the horrendous reality of the gap between the rich and the poor. They should also cooperate to request for redistribution and to achieve reformations such as universalization of health care.
Boo does an excellent job of making her book sound interesting, making the nonfiction work easy to follow along. She provides detailed descriptions of objects such as garbage, which make the readers able to have a vivid imagination that allows them to feel empathy. However, although Boo’s book provides a detailed story on the lives of the slum-dwellers, it lacks a comparison target. Boo could have interviewed people who live outside of the slums because this would have been helpful to the readers in figuring out the level of inequality through measurements such as the Gini