Understanding poverty

Katherine Boo is an American writer, an investigative journalist, who wrote about the disadvantaged. She is married to an Indian academic and this is how she ended up visiting India and spending long stretches of time there. She described here experiences in her book, Behind the beautiful forevers. A small, blond American woman, she stood out in the Annawadi slum adjacent to the Mumbai airport. Making use of translators, she got to know the people there, the boy who was a successful dealer in trash until he was falsely accused of instigating a murder, the younger boy who made a very precarious living by scavenging, the woman whose ambition was to become a local politician and slum landlord, the girl with no prospects except to get married to the man her parents chose for her, She writes about children, orphans who somehow survive by their wits. She also writes about corrupt policemen, who demand bribes for doing their job, corrupt politicians who divert money given by international charities for education into their won pockets, the public prosecutor who tries to extort payment for mitigating the prosecution for a crime that was never committed. It is all powerful stuff. We get to know people who somehow survive in conditions and circumstances that to us, living a comfortable middle class life in a Western society seem unimaginable. The children play games, families quarrel, neighbours fight. They live from day to day for a glimmer of hope, the hope that the slum will not be bulldozed just yeat, or their part of the slum will be the last to me removed, that somewhere, out in the country, if they made a little money by collecting rubbish they might have a better life. It is grim reading, but Katherine Boo never makes judgements. She describes people and their circumstances as they are, with understanding and compassion. A wonderful book.