Book review: Behind the Beautiful Forevers, Katherine Boo (2012)

This work of literary journalism examines the lives of slum dwellers in Mumbai and despite the evident talent of the author and the competent execution of her artistic vision it’s a tawdry affair that attempts to give an operatic strength to its pitiful subject. The endemic corruption of slumlord Asha and the politicians and police that look after the slum are toxic. Existence for people living in the community of Annawadi, a slum that has been built up against the perimeter of an airport, are miserable and brutish, distinguished only by different degrees of oppression or abuse.

The book functions as a searing indictment of the government of India and shows what a society looks like without such basics as the existence of land titles and street addresses, a sewage system, indoor toilets, home water supply, roads, public transport, public education, and a functioning public sphere with its own disciplined and unbiased media.

I read about half of it before getting bored with the relentless misery on offer from Boo, who is an American with a background in investigative journalism. I similarly didn’t get to the end of ‘Slumdog Millionaire’, the 2008 film by director Danny Boyle, having left the cinema before the film ended (I reviewed it here on 21 January 2009). If you want to know exactly what is wrong with the postcolonial project, these are the places to go to find out. While Indian academics complain loudly about such things as the East India Company, the reality on the ground in Mumbai lies in a realm entirely outside the periphery of a rational mind.

Life as it is portrayed here is horrific and depressing and the fact that it took a foreigner to recount stories that people back at home in New Delhi are too busy taking bribes to address, must surely be a matter of great shame for the Indian people.