Analysis Of Behind The Beautiful Forevers

In order to raise awareness of the staggering injustices, oppression and mass poverty that plague many Indian informal settlements (referred to as slum), Katherine Boo’s novel, Behind the Beautiful Forevers, unveils stories of typical life in a Mumbai slum. Discussing topics surrounding gender relations, environmental issues, and corruption, religion and class hierarchies as well as demonstrating India’s level of socioeconomic development. Encompassing this, the following paper will argue that Boo’s novel successfully depicts the mass social inequality within India. With cities amongst the fastest growing economies in South Eastern Asia, it is difficult to see advances in the individual well-being of the vast majority of the nation. With high

This is necessary as the vast majority of individuals migrating from rural to urban centers has been steadily increasing with the level of economic growth seen within the past twenty years as mentioned earlier. Unfortunately, this situation has further shown the structural issues and inequalities of cities, as most migrants end up having a poor quality of life living in informal settlements as highlight substantially by Boo. As a means of tackling this, however, the Indian government has turned its focus on investing rural regions, developing the agricultural sector. Specifically, Boo mentions that “the prime minister, Manmohan Singh, had come down from Delhi to express his concern for the farmers’ hardships, and the central government’s determination to relieve it” (p. 138). While this is definitely important funds are not being divided justly. For starters, between rural and urban areas almost all investments are being targeting towards rural regions, which is only addressing issues of inequality in one section of the country. Furthermore, across rural areas inequalities of investment are quite often overlooked. Although, “one of the governments hopes was to stop villagers from abandoning their farms and further inundating cities like Mumbai, but Asha’s relatives knew nothing of these celebrated relief programs” (p. 138). Therefore, even though

Nevertheless, inequality continues to be a major problem within cities and between rural and urban areas. Encompassing this situation is Katherine Boo’s novel Behind the Beautiful Forevers, which attempts to shine some light on the conditions of Mumbai’s informal settlements. Following the life of two rural migrant families residing in the Annawadi settlement, Boo highlights the everyday challenges individuals must fact to survive. As such, one of the major topics of the novel is inequality as a consequences of a lack of investment in basic needs, a matter of poor planning based on interest differences as well as corruption. Therefore, it can be argued that through her novel, Boo was able to successfully depict the how inequality has impacted the lives of those residing in informal settlements, with the fact that housing and land rights alone is an issue not being properly dealt