Themes In Behind The Beautiful Forevers

Mumbai Memo

In Behind the Beautiful Forevers, by Kathrine Boo, the main characters of the novel experienced many adversities and injustices throughout their stories, like blatant corruptions, exploitations, inequality and etc. Though many of the issues that arose from novel can be regarded as human rights abuse, the most prevalent abuse was the right, or lack of, for Annawadians to have a “standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control”, which is stated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) (U.N. 1948),

The main characters are one of several thousand squatters living in Annawadi, one of the many slums in Mumbai, where more than half of Mumbai 's populace live in makeshift huts, which they call home. These slums suffer from widespread poverty and unemployment, poor public health, and low educational standards for a large portion of its population. These makeshift huts do not provide the adequate housing and shelter for the inhabitants from the elements like bulldozers, natural and unnatural diseases, religious turmoil, and the corrupt officials. With over 3,000 people living densely near the sewage filled lake, where many of the garbage are dumbed from the nearby luxury hotels, the risk of waterborne ailments is high and the bad air from air pollution only worsened the condition of sick people. The monsoon season would only exacerbate the situation because of the sewage brought up by the flooding onto the living areas. These living conditions that the Indian government fits adequate is unacceptable and goes against “standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of the people” recognized in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) (U.N.