Analysis Of Behind The Beautiful Forevers

Katherine Boo’s Behind the Beautiful Forevers focuses on the struggles of Annawadi’s residents as many of them attempt to create a better life for their families. A small slum located near the Mumbai airport, Annawadi highlights the juxtaposition of an Indian underclass and the growing economy of the country around them. While so many of these families, through an expanding global market economy, can see the benefits of globalization and capitalism, the potential upsides of these systems maintain out of reach as most Annawadians deal with the harsher realities of poverty, hunger, and exploitation. As the text looks into many aspects of daily life in a particular slum between 2007 and 2011, a debilitating connection can be seen between capitalism …show more content…
At every level of this system, there is an opportunity for an individual or group to increase their own opportunity through exploiting someone in a more vulnerable economic position. It is as if corruption flourishes as its own type of business, simultaneously filling in and intensifying the cracks in their informal economic system. Two contrasting examples exist between the experiences of the Husains and Asha’s family. In the case of the Husains, the reader learns about the crippling effect of corruption on a hard-working family trying to uphold a relatively higher set of values. Asha’s experience shows a woman on the other end of corruption, using it as a tool to benefit her family’s standard of living. Regardless of the families’ differing outcomes, both groups undergo a great deal of difficult working and living conditions, as well as financial setbacks and …show more content…
Moreover, it becomes clear how fragile a developing economy can be, and that nothing in terms of money or status is permanent. Her plan to profit over the speculation of Annawadian land causes a looming distrust from her neighbors, and she eventually gets slighted on the commission she was supposed to have made. However, one of her undertakings, a fake school system, provides her and her family with a comfortable profit at the conclusion of the book. The last section of Behind the Beautiful Forevers also shows Abdul’s father and sister cleared of charges, while Abdul’s case sits in the bureaucracy of the juvenile court system. The book highlights the effects of a globalizing world and global inequality on individual residents of Annawadi. In such a delicate economic system, corruption functions as a dangerous, but practical business of its own. With so many people unsure where their next meal will come from, competition is at the same time necessary for survival, but also detrimental. It causes the inevitable class struggle of capitalism, but with so little money making it down into the underclass of Annawadi, it is nearly impossible for its residents to acquire any impacting leverage against the persistent economic