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Behind the Beautiful Forevers -- The Discussion
I didn't care for Asha much as I was reading the book because of the way she used people but you guys are right. It probably is very hard to be good when you live in those kinds of conditions.
Gina, it would seem to me that power is an illusion. Everyone is powerless so not one honest person is able to represent and unite the slums. Asha thinks she has influence and power but really, if her scams are brought to light she will likely be the fall guy. They can get angry together and even do something about it, but there is so much corruption that those who lose power would probably be replaced by other corrupt people. Its a cycle that knows no end. Who is responsible for the tides of change? The poor or the rich?
So so true Ruth and I don't see evidence of that among the people of Annawadi. those looking for success of any kind were hoping to profit from the corrupt system of favors or simply to keep working as hard as they could for the future of their families more than themselves.
These were uneducated people. If you don't know any different, you tend to accept what you have. It is difficult to imagine another reality.Isn't it outsiders, from the more privileged classes, who can eventually make the difference? Maybe another Mahatmas Gandhi? In our own country, political corruption, child labor, exploitation of factory workers, unsanitary meat and food, etc got very bad, before middle and upper class leaders in the Progressive movement finally got laws passed to change things in the early 20th century.
We are so fortunate that we live in a society governed by laws. Corruption exists, but it doesn't permeate every level of government like in many poor countries. We are a rich country and our public servants are paid more than a living wage. That isn't true in many countries.
I also think Sue brought up an important point. People don't rebel because they lack the physical energy. These people suffered from inadequate nutrition and healthcare. Abdul, who I think was everyone's favorite, was 5'1 and weighed only 108 pounds in spite of the fact that he was in his upper teens. The slum dweller all suffered from stunted growth. This affects the brain as well as the body.
And all that pollution they were around every day must have affected both their body and their mind. Just the idea of a "sewage pond" makes me want to retch.
So true! I think the author's foot turned blue after she accidentally got it in the pond. Incidentally, the author has a number of health issues, including rheumatoid arthritis, that compromise her immune system. She put herself at risk to research the story of this community. She is married to a man from India.
Ann wrote: "So true! I think the author's foot turned blue after she accidentally got it in the pond. Incidentally, the author has a number of health issues, including rheumatoid arthritis, that compromise her..."That comment made me think of another ongoing question that I had as I read this book: How does an observer, like Boo in this situation, avoid contaminating the situation with her presence? I would be so tempted to try to move a number of those families into a better situation but it wouldn't change the reality of poor people in India. However, it would change the story that she is trying to expose.
Barbara wrote: "Ann wrote: "So true! I think the author's foot turned blue after she accidentally got it in the pond. Incidentally, the author has a number of health issues, including rheumatoid arthritis, that co..."Barbara, my spouse and I were just talking about journalists "interfering" in situations they are reporting. Last night, over a nice dinner in an air-conditioned kitchen.
But to the point.
During the earthquake in Haiti a few years ago, the NPR reporter Jason Beaubien began to cry as he looked at the body of a little girl. A debate ensued over whether he, as a reporter, had the right to cry or should have retained a professional distance. I heard him break down and I appreciated his humanity. But not everyone agreed with me.
I admit I do not have the answer. Are journalists helping people by calling attention to their pain or helping themselves to get the Pulitzer? I do know that some investigative journalists have actually exposed bad situation and have caused change for the better.
Based on an earlier post on this thread, in which one of our group mentioned trying to get in touch with Katherine Boo, I have formed an opinion of Boo's motives. I am curious as to other CR's opinions.
Portia wrote: "...I admit I do not have the answer. Are journalists helping people by calling attention to their pain or helping themselves to get the Pulitzer? "Well, the two objectives are not mutually exclusive.
Jason Beaubien. My ears aren't what they used to be.Of course, Ruth, I see your point.
I feel strongly that exposing bad situations to the world is, almost always, a positive thing. I definitely think that Boo's work in this book is positive. What I meant was that, during the events that occurred in this book, it must have been very difficult not to intervene. For instance, during the trials, I would have wanted to use whatever influence I could have put together to help Abdul's family be declared innocent. But, that would have changed the narrative and the reality. On the other hand, given that Abdul was found not guilty, maybe some of that was done.Portia, I don't think that one person's inability to contact Boo about ways to help means that her motives in writing this book are not positive. I can think of a lot of possible reasons for that. And, as Ann pointed out, she risked her health to write this. She also has a history of writing about poverty, as Yulia said.
Wow. This is the second time I've gotten zapped for suggesting that humans are capable of less than honorable motivations.
This is from an NPR interview with Boo:http://www.npr.org/2012/11/16/1652726...
On not being able to financially help the people she was writing about.
"When I first came to Annawadi, I explained that I was there to write about them and that the constrictions of my profession, which I try to adhere to, involve that I didn't end up paying them for their stories. It's a convention in my profession that I struggle with. But at the same time, I know that if I had gone to Annawadi and started handing out money to some people and not to others ... it would have been a very disruptive thing."
She thinks it was her job to portray the slum dwellers' lives as honestly as she could. It is someone else's job to help them in other ways.
I do not question her motives. After all, when she started this project, she had no idea how successful the book would be. She put her own health at risk and spent a huge amount of time talking to Annawadi residents and pouring over documents so that she could give an accurate account of things like the corruption in the Fatima case, the horrible condition of the hospital, the lies of the government mediator, and the large number of killings of the residents which were not investigated by the police.
As for helping the people she wrote about later, I am reminded of Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Promote Peace ... One School at a Time by Greg Mortenson and David Relin. Later the veracity of incidents in the book was questioned as well as how much the foundation Mortenson set up actually helped the Pakistani and Afghan villagers. Relin, the co-writer, committed suicide.
I can see why Boo was not interested in following this path.
I just finished this book (very early) this morning. There are so many approaches to take in discussing it.First, the breathtaking level of corruption. I think I despised the woman official who kept trying to get bribes out of Abdul and his family more than I did the police who beat them. (Particularly when she was trying to get money to "get Fatima's husband to drop the case," when she knew that he wasn't the one in control of the case...) Next to Abdul, my favorite character was the judge who finally saw through all the nonsense and found the dad & sister not guilty. Not a font of compassion (teasing them with "how long a sentence should I give them?"!) but at least he didn't try to exact money for giving the fair decision.
I was a little surprised that the book didn't present a single (relatively) healthy adult male who was the principal earner in his family. Maybe religious or social prohibitions would not allow Boo to get close enough to the lives of adult men? Or was a family headed by a healthy man less likely to be living in a slum? (Somehow I think not!)
I was horrified by the narrative of the man who died over the course of a day on the side of a busy road. It reminded me of the parable of the Good Samaritan, with no Good Samaritan. Studies in the US show that poor people are generally more generous (relative to their wealth) than rich people. It speaks to how beaten down these folks are that they were so singularly lacking in compassion for their neighbors. Rather, a neighbor's misfortune was either entertainment, via gossip, or simply a way to see oneself as marginally better off, or not worthy of notice.
Portia, I am sincerely sorry if I sounded like I was zapping you about questioning Boo's motives. I think this is another case of not being able to hear a person's tone of voice on the internet. I can definitely understand questioning a journalist's motives but, in this case, I don't.
Portia,I think you raised a valid question. We don't all agree, but it's good to discuss things even if we have different opinions.
For those of you who wanted to know more about the people in the book, this is an interesting article about interviews with Manju, her mother, and Abdul's brother shortly after the book was published. It is from an English language Indian newspaper.
http://beta.dawn.com/news/700090/the-...
Mary Ellen,What an interesting observation about the lack of (relatively) healthy adult men in this book. My guess is that the young people were more open with the writer. As for the adult women, much of the information about Asha came from her daughter.
Fatima's husband was a hard worker, but he was away from the slum most of the day. Abdul's father had TB and Manju's father was an alcoholic. I wonder where he got the booze. I also wonder how many intact families were in the slum.
Ann, it seems that some form of rotgut booze can be found (or made) the world over.
Where IS Meryl when we need her?I'm sure we all agree that we've each learned a great deal from this book and these postings.
I love to be with people who agree with me. I learn from being with people who don't.
Sue,I'm sure you're right about the booze. The "drug" the kids were taking was from correction fluid bottles. You never know what can give you a high!
Anju, whose husband was an alcoholic, upsets me, but I also feel very sorry for her and the other women whose parents chose such unsuitable mates. I believe it is possible for an arranged marriage to be happy, but when you're at the very low end of the social ladder there probably aren't many good prospects. The saddest case was the girl who committed suicide rather than let her parents make the choice for her.
When we were talking about the sewage lake, I remembered one of the passages that made my skin crawl:As the morning went on, a fisherman waded through the water, one hand pushing aside cigarette packs and blue plastic bags, the other dimpling the surface with a net. He would take his catch to the Marol market to be ground into fish oil, a health product for which demand had surged now that it was valued in the West.
I have taken fish oil supplements on occasion, depending on whether the latest info persuaded me that it was a good idea. I looked online to see if I could find anything about the origins of individual fish oil supplements and could only find this paragraph in a Wikipedia article:
In 2005, fish oil production declined in all main producing countries with the exception of Iceland. The 2005 production estimate is about 570,000 tonnes in the five main exporting countries (Peru, Denmark, Chile, Iceland and Norway), a 12% decline from the 650,000 tonnes produced in 2004.[citation needed]. Peru continues to be the main fish oil producer worldwide, with about one fourth of total fish oil production. (interesting spelling of tons)
If I ever decide to take them again, I think I will need to know where they come from.
In one interview, Boo stated that there was a still and brothels in Annawandi. It's in the link Ann provided."And all around it in this, the single open space in the slum were people cooking and bathing and fighting and flirting. And there were goats and water buffalo. There was a little brothel, and men would line up outside the little brothel. And there was a liquor still. And mainly there were families and children who were trying their best to find a niche in the global market economy. Almost no one in Annawadi had permanent work. Six people out of 3,000, last I checked, had permanent work."
Also, in that interview, Boo talks about where the residents of Annawadi fall on the poverty ladder in India:"Go to the village, and you'll see what poor is. ... Officially, the poverty lines in many countries, including India, are set so low that officially the people that I'm writing about look like part of the great success narrative of modern global capitalism. They look like the more than 100 million people who have been freed since liberalization in India in 1991 from poverty. ...
"On the books, these men, women and children have succeeded in the global economy. They're the success stories. But I hope what my book shows is that it's a little more complicated than that."
Success stories?!? I don't think I'll ever look at statistics related to poverty quite the same way again.
And, that also made me think about one of the discussion questions on the book's website:
Barbara Ehrenreich calls Behind the Beautiful Forevers “one of the most powerful indictments of economic inequality I’ve ever read.” Yet the book shows the world of the Indian rich–lavish Bollywood parties, an increasingly glamorous new airport–almost exclusively through the eyes of the Annawadians. Are they resentful? Are they envious? How does the wealth that surrounds the slumdwellers shape their own expectations and hopes?
These people see every day that other people are doing far better than they are, but they can't find any way to make a significant step in that direction. I'm sure the village dwellers are beyond miserable (it brings new meaning to the word), but they don't confront the disparity every day. Are the residents of Annadwadi in a worse situation in some ways because of that?
Barbara, I've often wondered about that myself, in relation to poor people in the US. (Reality check here: poverty level for family in India, about $400/year. US poverty level for family of 4: $23,550.) The envy and resentment in the book seemed aimed principally at other Annawadi inhabitants. The only negative remark I remember concerning the rich came from a young man who got a job at one of the hotels, concerning the New Year's Eve party, at which the rich people did nothing but get drunk. (Book is back @ library so I can't look up the quote; sorry!)The only reference in the text that I found to the title was buried toward the end, in a section discussing first-stage demolition of Annawadi. They filled in the sewage lake (bad news for the fish-oil fisherman) and tore down the Beautiful Forevers wall. I took it that the name of the wall referenced an advertisement affixed (or painted?) on the outer side at the wall, and directed toward the affluent. Behind the "Beautiful Forevers," then, lay another world altogether, a mixture of hard work, risk, courage, suffering, despair, disease, hope...
When I read this a few months agoI couldn't put it down and then found it so intense, knowing that this was not Slumdog Millionaire and that there was not going to be a happy ending, I had to take a break from it for a couple of weeks. Just got back from vacation, so late to this discussion and just looked through all the comments.Great comments from everyone. Why is corruption so pervasive in India? Somewhere in the book it indicates that it is the norm. If everyone is doing it it must be OK. The scandals go right up through the very rich though --mining licenses, etc. etc. One of the questions posed is does this poverty make it harder to be good? Not sure of the answer. Even the rich don't seem to be good--just a higher level of corruption. I have a friend in the Indian government. Incorruptible. She says people now know not to bother her, but when I asked her how many government officials took bribes, she said probably well over half. Why can't India get its act together?? There is so much hopeful about the country. Some of the best technical universities in the world--why is primary education so awful??
Is it Zahrunisa (sorry I haven't unpacked and can't find the book)who thinks that people were more unified and helpful to each other back in the villages. But it is clear that in many ways poverty was worse in their villages and that for many of them life is better in the slum. Probably people would have helped each other more in the village within each caste, but I suspect that outside of that there would have been little sympathy for others. The friendship between Manju and Meena would have been impossible there.
Besides admiring Abdul I also like Sunil a lot. He really cares for his sister Sunita (though we don't hear much about her) and refuses to be a thief. Also, Abdul's mother, Zehrunisa, even after all that happens, invites Fatima's family for the Eid celebration.
The recent poisoning in India was tragic, but hearing some of the parents comments there made me think again, these people have hopes, but how hopeless some of their hopes are. My son wanted to be an engineer, my daughter wanted to be a doctor etc. and this is in a school that was probably no better than the state school in Annawadi--where the children went only because there were free meals. Abdul's family wants a bit of land elsewhere. Manju wants to be an insurance agent. Most hopes are dashed, yet they keep at it, like Abdul. There is no choice but to do what one has to to survive, or to commit suicide. Asha gets what she wants. She is about the only one. Manju I found very sad. Her mother pushes her to get an education but it seems it is mainly to make her more desirable in the marriage market. She doesn't seem to have any desire for her daughter to do anything else (except join her in corruption.)
What do people think of Sister Paulette? There has been some criticism of the book because we only see her through the children's eyes and don't get her side. For example, is it possible that she sells the used clothes and catsup packets to get a little money to buy other things for the children that they need more? Kicking them out at age 11? Age 11 used to be a pretty good level of education, and certainly Sunil did get some basic education there. He could read and write I think? Did she do this because there was more pressure to take much younger children in? We don't know. Likewise for World Vision. I had thought that this was one of the better charities around helping the poor, and it probably still is, but after poking around found that there have been problems with their "sponsorship" program. Donated money doesn't go to the sponsored child but into a pot for general uses. If anyone is interested in that sort of program, look into CFCF. There services do go directly to help the family and to pay for tuition and expenses for the child as well as for community programs. Services to the family are contingent on the child remaining in school. It started in Guatemala but operates in other countries including India.
Why do people think the author stopped when she did? We don't hear the end of Abdul's case. Was it time for her to leave India? Was it another example of hopelessness to leave him trapped in the legal system for an unforeseeable future? The latter I think.
It is clear that there are more successful entrepreneurs than Abdul in the slum. Chicken and egg producers for example. I would have liked to hear something about them, just to know if there is ANYONE in Annawadi whose hopes are being fulfilled without being corrupt, like Asha.
Back to work after vacation.
Lots to think about in your post, Dorothy.Does poverty make it more difficult to be good? Boo seems to think so. At the least it makes it more understandable if you do bad things. The boys who collected recyclables sometimes stole. Since they were fighting for their survival, I think most of us would excuse that. Asha was a murkier case since she seemed to get a lot worse as the book went on. I sympathized with her at first, but not as she became an active player in the housing game.
If poverty excuses illegal behavior, does it do the same in our country?
It's not just India that has a corrupt society. It's a big problem in Africa, and in Afghanistan it has reached epic proportions. I remember students from Mexico and Ukraine telling me that you had to pay teachers to get good grades there. The young man from Mexico told me that there was much corruption in the U.S. too. I suppose he's right, although it does not affect our everyday life like it does in poorer countries. In many of the poorer countries it is seen as part of the official's salaries because they are paid so badly.
I am not familiar with CFCF. Can you tell us more about it?
Ann, on thinking about one of your comments a bit more and on another level, I think perhaps corruption does affect our daily lives in the US more than we first see. Payoffs to chemical companies have allowed dangerous substances to stay on the market and pollute our environment and lives longer than necessary (and still do),. The unnecessary use of antibiotics and hormones in corporate farming are endangering us all in spite of all the knowledge which should eliminate it. Drug companies lobbied extensively to gain the right for non-negotiable prices in the Medicare drug bill.These things affect millions of us and I would say they involve various levels of corruption. Some of these affect us daily, just in a less visible way.
I'm not trying to equate these with the level of everyday corruption we witnessed in this book, just to say that there are more sophisticated levels that can still affect us routinely.
Ann wrote: "Lots to think about in your post, Dorothy.Does poverty make it more difficult to be good? Boo seems to think so. At the least it makes it more understandable if you do bad things. The boys who co..."
http://www.cfcausa.org/ is their web site.
It looks like a good organization, Dorothy. I think you bring up some interesting questions about Sister Paulette. It would be interesting to hear her side of the story.
Sue wrote: "Ann, on thinking about one of your comments a bit more and on another level, I think perhaps corruption does affect our daily lives in the US more than we first see. Payoffs to chemical companies h..."Sue, I agree with you. Here is the latest book about our Nation's Capital. This Town. And, in the July What I Am Reading thread, Larry gives a spot on description of how Washingtonians greet everyone with "What do you do?" which, as Larry so accurately points out means. "What can you do for me." Please read Larry's comments. I can't begin to explain this as well as he does.
Sue,When the Mexican student first suggested that we had a lot of corruption in the United States, my immediate reaction was to deny it. As I have thought about it more, I have realized that he had a good point. Thanks for your examples.
One thing that we do have in the United States is the rule of law. Sure I realize that it is not perfect and is too often applied unequally, but I still think we have done better than the vast majority of societies in history. In THE BEAUTIFUL FOREVER, police, government investigators, and witnesses could all be bought and often had to be if you didn't want them to turn against you.
Portia wrote: "Sue wrote: "Ann, on thinking about one of your comments a bit more and on another level, I think perhaps corruption does affect our daily lives in the US more than we first see. Payoffs to chemical..."Thanks Portia. I've been following that conversation but didn't think of it in terms of this one. Good catch.
Ann wrote: "Sue,When the Mexican student first suggested that we had a lot of corruption in the United States, my immediate reaction was to deny it. As I have thought about it more, I have realized that he ha..."
I agree Ann. We do have law. And in spite of its weaknesses, there are people constantly trying to apply it well. I can be naive at times, but I do think that there are many now who are always fighting corruption at many levels. 100 years ago in this country it wasn't as easy to act against corruption. It was too powerful and pervasive. Perhaps India is at that stage in it's development.
Sue and Ann, we are all three right. This is good!Corruption does exist in our country but it gets exposed and dealt with. Virginia's governor and his family are under the microscope due to the work of a Washington Post reporter and have paid back the "gifts" a businessman gave the family.
Thank goodness for our First Amendment and investigative journalism.
I was disappointed when Manju quit teaching her little students after she signed on to her mother's multi-"school" scam. (And whoever said that Asha & Manju would take the fall for that if it came to light: I agree wholeheartedly.)I wouldn't blame World Vision for using funds to make general improvements rather than sending money directly to one child or one family. That idea is very appealing: I am sending money to benefit this child whose picture I have and I'll get updates on her progress, etc. But a friend of mine was involved in a fundraising effort for a mission in Africa that started with this approach. It caused all kinds of problems, from wreaking havoc on the local economy (suddenly a few families have a wildly higher income than anyone else) to destroying a sense of community. Of course, to suggest in fundraising materials that money is going to go for the exclusive benefit of one person or family when the charity has no intention of using it that way, is fundamentally dishonest.
The Sr. Paulette references made me curious. She seemed to be an independent actor, no other Sisters working with her... Odd.
Mary Ellen wrote: "I was disappointed when Manju quit teaching her little students after she signed on to her mother's multi-"school" scam. (And whoever said that Asha & Manju would take the fall for that if it came..."Good point re the charity issues Mary Ellen. Very difficult issues with no easy solutions.
You're right, Mary Ellen. Helping individuals in a foreign country is a lot trickier than we think. I guess it's better to spend money on something for the community as a whole.Yes, I would sure like to learn more about the mysterious Sister Paulette. She sounds like someone out of a Dickens novel. Hopefully, she did some good.
Early in this discussion, we talked about Katherine Boo's inclusion of the word "Hope" in her title.For me, this article pretty much explains it.
http://india.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/0...
Thanks for that Portia. Very interesting.Sounds something like those who eternally flock to LA or New York to be discovered but Mumbai seems even less forgiving with even less support available.
I agree Sue. This article also made me think of the call centers in India. Telephone sales is very much like auditioning, in that you psyche yourself up to believe the next call/audition will be the one as you face continued rejection.
Hadn't thought about it that way but now I can almost visualize rooms and rooms of men and women answering calls, imagining how they will move up the ladder to better things.
I think we should remember that many Indians do have much better lives due to the economic development of recent decades. When I was a kid, India seemed hopelessly mired in the past. At some point the country decided to go to a more market based economy. It also concentrated on technological education, producing really gifted software types. I know because I used to work with some of them during my stint at the phone company. The call centers seem bad to us, but they really are an opportunity for the people who work there.Has anyone here ever been to India? I love to travel, but have always been reluctant to go there because of the terrible poverty. We used to read of all the people living on the streets of Calcutta. I wonder if that is still the case.
I've always been curious about India too, Ann, but never brave enough to travel there. We talked to an Indian woman at a café in an airport once and she recommended places to visit in India. I have them written down in a travel journal somewhere. Now, I just have to find it. I believe she said to avoid Mumbai and go to the northern cities.I wonder how much of India's corruption comes from their long occupation by Britain. When the British pulled out, there seemed to be no transition in which Indians could slowly relearn the art of governing themselves again. I was thinking about the difference between the British leaving the U.S. colonies and them leaving India. What little I've read leads me to believe that the racism regarding Indian skin color would have led to far more limitations in their participation. In the U.S., most of the colonists were British or European and the racism worked against the native peoples here. I should add that all of my speculation is based on very limited knowledge.
I agree with those who say that there is a lot of corruption in the U.S. as well. It's just not as obvious and we definitely have a fairly strong rule of law which doesn't seem to be present in India, at least it isn't obvious in this book. However, I think we had more protections prior to the last decade. Many of the protections that prevent us from being stopped and searched without cause, etc. have been weakened.
For those interested in Indian History you might want to readFrom the Ruins of Empire: The Intellectuals Who Remade Asia and Indian Summer: The Secret History of the End of an Empire. Both are excellent books about early Indian history as well as the Partition years. There does not appear to be much bias either.
Ann wrote: "I think we should remember that many Indians do have much better lives due to the economic development of recent decades. When I was a kid, India seemed hopelessly mired in the past. At some poin..."I was in India three years ago, but was very lucky with the situation, and we did not go to either Calcutta or Mumbai, so I cannot speak to the situation there. My best friend from grad school is Indian and was working for the government of the state of Himachal Pradesh in Shimla, in the north (as a aside, she is incorruptible and said people have stopped trying to bribe her as her reputation has gotten around, but she estimates that a third to over half of government workers take bribes). We spent time with her family in Manali further up in the foothills of the Himalayas and also traveled on our own. Yes, we saw some horrendous poverty, especially out of train windows going in and out of cities further south, but also a lot of hope. Everywhere we went we saw innumerable ads for "English tuition" schools. Everyone wants their children to learn English in order to get ahead and the state schools generally teach in the local language.
Himachal Pradesh may be a little unusual. When it was formed as a state from parts of two other states there was general land distribution, so nearly everyone has at least a little plot of ground of their own. Yes, we saw villages where people are very very poor by our standards(but really beautiful villages) but no slums like in the book. We saw not one beggar in Himachal. The only abject poverty we saw there were shacks built along side the road by the families of Nepali workers who had been brought in to work on the tunnel project through the Himalayas (because of their ability to work at high altitude). and in that case it was hard to tell how impoverished they really were, as it was clearly temporary housing during the season that construction was possible when they could make relatively decent money--probably not much worse housing than impoverished migrant workers in the past here. Our best experience there was being invited to a village wedding of a relative of our friends in which the entire village, from the poorest to the (relatively speaking) well off helped prepare the wedding feast, and everyone, from the poorest on up, sat down together to eat.
We must remember that India is a huge country, even more varied in language, religion and custom than the United States, and that government there varies enormously. There are some places that government works but many many places it doesn't. I think some of the southern states, e.g. Kerala, are supposed to be pretty well run too. Same thing in this country, government varies (I live in a city, Yonkers, that has been notoriously corrupt--my former local city council member is in jail.) but it varies to a much much greater extreme in India, and with little fear there of ending up in jail, as we saw in the book--something to be said for this country--at least some crooks do get jailed! My son was in a central part of India visiting a friend who works for an NGO who commented that NGOs are doing things that in other countries the government is expected to do.
India was an overwhelming country to visit in both good and bad ways. Again, our way was eased by having friends there. I don't think I would have wanted to travel on our own at our age (mid 60's)as we did without that backup to help in planning. We are too old for the third class trains my son took! The alternative, taking a tour, would not have allowed us to meet as many ordinary Indians as we did being on our own.
As to why there is so much corruption in India, I'm not sure. I'm not certain it can be blamed on British racism. The IS (the senior civil service administration in India and reasonably uncorrupt is a direct holdover from the British. Undoubtedly however, there was a shortage of mid-level functionaries and even high office holders when the British left, and the breakup of British India into India and Pakistan was a tramuatic event that must have affected government continuity drastically. In some ways the government seems stuck in the 19th century--what's the Dicken's novel in which a court case goes on and on for generations with piles and piles of paper?? The term in India for that kind of bureaucracy is the "Paper Raj." The bureaucracy is inefficient, has never modernized much, and people have learned that the only way to get anything done is a bribe.
Will that happen anywhere there is inefficient government and weak rule of law?? Certainly there seems to be a lot of corruption in China, and that can't be blamed on racism. There are some good programs getting started in India, for example a universal identification system aimed at making sure aid gets to whom it is supposed to, but it is all still at an early stage of making the government more efficient and honest. I do think there is hope for the future in India. and I hope it turns out to be more than merely hope.
Thank you so much for sharing your experiences, Dorothy. How fortunate for you to be able to visit friends there.Excellent point that India is a very large country with with very different states. We need to remember that.
A couple more brief points about India and the book. In so many ways it seems as if India needs to jump from the 19th century straight into the 21st. New York's slums in the 19th century must have been about as bad. Even Charles Dickens was appalled by what he saw in the Five Points neighborhood here. Water and air pollution, we had it all. It's far from perfect here but better than it was.One of the things that worries me most about India's future (and China's for that matter) is environmental degradation and general ugliness. In the race for development so much becomes polluted and just plain ugly.
As to garbage recycling, in some places, especially in the the towns and cities, this is what we saw: most people who can afford it drink water in plastic bottles and toss the bottle--no bottle deposit there. They don't care. Maybe they just assume garbage pickers like Abdul will collect it. "Recyclers" like Abdul and his family collect metal and plastic (we did see this), pigs were left to root through the food refuse, and the very little that may be left after all that was burned along the side of the road. Pretty ugly and degrading. More efficient than landfill???
Even among the rising middle-class there seems to be little care about public spaces. We went to visit relatives in a beautiful spacious apartment in Delhi. The common entrance, stairs, halls were disgusting. If one doesn't have any social cohesion with one's neighbor, it seemed why should one care? Maybe Zehrunisa's point about life in a village had something to it? How does one build a feeling of there being a common good?? Why do we have it, at least to some extent, in New York or San Francisco and not in Delhi or Mumbai??
(and as an aside to any west-coasters, we were just in San Francisco and I was so impressed with the "common good" there.)
Constant Reader
Books mentioned in this topic
An Uncertain Glory: India and its Contradictions (other topics)Where I Was From (other topics)
Indian Summer: The Secret History of the End of an Empire (other topics)
From the Ruins of Empire: The Revolt Against the West and the Remaking of Asia (other topics)
This Town: Two Parties and a Funeral — plus plenty of valet parking! — in America's Gilded Capital (other topics)
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Sad isn't it? How can anyone help with all the corruption?