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. There are discussions on topics surrounding gender relations, environmental issues, 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 Indian cities amongst the fastest growing economies in South East Asia, it is difficult to see evidence of this in the individual well-being of the vast majority of the nation. With high unemployment rates, the expansion of informal settlements and the neglect of basic human rights, one of India’s megacities, Mumbai, is a good representation of these social divisions. Incorporating analysis’s from material provide in the Development and the City course at the University of Guelph, it is believed that a significant issues is the means to which governments invests in their people. Within cities, municipal governments are often more interested in modernizing than addressing the major structural concerns mentioned above. Furthermore, social inequalities do not just expand across cities, rather this is a problem that engulf the entire nation, which Boo also points to. This can especially be seen when