Behind the beautiful forever by Katherine Boo

Behind the beautiful forever by Katherine Boo

Behind the beautiful forever; life, death, and hope in a Mumbai undercity is a book by Katherine Boo written in 2012. The book talks about the present slums in India, Mumbai. The book monitors the lives of different people living in the slums but follows closely the lives of a young trash picker, a student who undergoes college learning, and a female who is a slumlord. The slum name is Annawadi.

Slum-dwellers go through various injustices in their day-to-day lives.  The inequities include ethnicity created among people living in the community and labour practices that fair some class of people in slums. Discrimination of people according to their race, and according to their gender. Treating people, according to their religion, is also a form of injustice that happens in society. Other injustices experienced in slums are education discrimination, sexual orientation to residents, the nationality of a person, race of different people in slums, different ages, among others.

The actions needed to control social injustices and oppression in modern society will be through acting rather than giving out mere talks. We have to create mass awareness of different social injustices that take place in our community. People have to understand the types of oppression they go through and how to handle crimes. Many people go through the persecution daily, and most of them do not know that they are victims of social injustices.

The rescue centers have to be set in society, and the professionals hired to deal with the cases. The government has to collaborate with non-governmental organizations and come up with the best ways of helping the victims who fall prey to social injustices and oppression. The society needs to understand that every person is of importance no matter their stand in the community.

The topic of education in the book touches much on Manju, who is a daughter to Asha. The girl tries her best to become the first female resident in Annawadi slums to graduate from college. She dreams of a better life and hopes to become a teacher one day and teach people living in the slums the importance of education.

Manju goes against the will of her mother, Asha, who wants her to be a slumlord. Asha argues that slumlord will make her daughter more productive than the education she is currently undertaking. Manju cares about the children in the slums, and that is the reason she went to college to acquire the skills, which she will later teach them.

Manju wants to be good and possess good character in society. She spends most of her time reading books and articles that sharpens her minds about the slum. She creates time to teach young girls the importance of education and some of the social injustices that occur to young women. All she wants is to see an educated society, especially the girl child who undergoes oppression and are victims of sexual harassment.

Manju was optimistic that only education would change slum dwellers’ lives. Through education, people will understand their rights; therefore, this will lower down the oppression rate in the areas. Training will equip them with skills that will foster innovation in the slum areas. Economic growth change will result in creating employment opportunities for youth, and many will surrender the garbage collection task. It is through education that corruption and crime activities in the slum of Annawadi will go down and foster faster growth of the slum.