Social Status In The Slum Of India

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Status / pg. 97: the position that someone occupies in a social group (also called social status) One thing about the people that live in the Slum in India is the ambition that all of the different people have. Even though they live where there is practically nothing, the amount of hard work that is put in is astronomical. A lot of them want the jobs that correlate to high status. The mother who picked garbage so her daughter could be a doctor wanted it. The twelve year old son in school so he could take care of his family wants it, and so did the father, because he wanted to be an actor. The father said himself that in 10 years he believed he would be a movie star. The daughter who wants to become a doctor has many, many years of schooling …show more content…

I believed that it was a free-for-all daily struggle of people fighting for food, water, shelter and more. There are social institutions, however. In fact, there was a statistic in the video that said there are nearly 900 pounds of biscuits distributed throughout the day in Dharavi. This is an economic social institution. In the book, it states that economic social institutions produce and distribute goods and services. It could be done through bosses, workers, buyers and more. Even in the poor, over-populated area of the slum, social institutions still exist. They are everywhere throughout the world, and technically have been around since our hunter-gatherer days came to an end. If you think about it, really take away any social institution in the world and what do you get? It would be people living to survive in very barbaric terms. To Americans, it seemed to me honestly that people in the slum sort of have a life like that already. In the United States, a social institution similar that to the example I just gave could be UPS or Fed Ex. They deliver items you buy to your door, have a certain quota to meet each day, and it affects every other social institution too. In Dharavi, the idea is very similar; it’s just not as technologically advanced as the US. If the biscuits were not delivered, certain families may not eat, if certain families did not eat, perhaps the parents could not teach education like they were trained to. If medicine were not around, so many people would get sick. It’s an on-going cycle that establishes jobs and responsibilities. It is absolutely no different than the United States at

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