Behind the Beautiful Forevers读后感10篇(6)

　　One can understand why Boo is eluded by this. Given her preoccupation with documenting “poor on poor crime” – the reasons why, in these competitive times, the poor work against each other and have little capacity for collective action – she overlooks the many empowering instances where they do successfully organize, and even win. One may argue, of course, that a single book (or film or documentary) can never do everything, and that the scale of responsibility of an individual author should always be viewed as limited. Yet I find it astonishing that in the 250-odd pages of this otherwise insightful book, there are no examples of sustainable and constructive political relationships, among the residents of Annawadi, or between the residents of Annawadi and the outside world. How odd, for this is Mumbai, a city famous for its vigorous housing rights movements, sex workers’ unions, and small vendors’ associations. For a “single, unexceptional slum,” Annawadi seems exceptional indeed.

　　This brings me to my final concern about the book. Boo’s work is part of a larger genre, of films and writings on the urban poor, that has exploded in popularity in the last decade. While the reasons for the proliferation of such works are many, the chief one, surely, is their relative ease of production. It is not difficult or expensive to obtain access to the poor. There are no razor-wired fences and gun-toting guards to contend with, and one need not bother with bribing maids or hacking laptops. In contrast, how much do we know about the bed-hopping, drug-snorting, verbally abusive ways of the rich？ And what do we know – Shobha De’s Socialite Evenings comes to mind – is not the stuff of assiduous videotaping, interviewing, and rummaging through public records, but of semi-autobiographical observations that can rarely lay much claim to authenticity. Aren’t the lives of the poor already an open story？ When does a work that scrutinizes the lives of the poor so unsparingly become exploitative？ And doesn’t the ease of access to the marginalized enlarge the author’s scale of responsibility, to leave absolutely no stone unturned？

　　Again, to be fair to Boo, her book is a cut above the standard fare on the subject. If turned into a film, it will most likely be superior to the heavy-handed Slumdog Millionaire, or even the more nuanced Salaam Bombay. There is a good deal to be learned from the book. “Ribby children with flies in their eyes” may never be seen in the same light again, and one may be pushed to care more about a waiter’s meager wages than whether he dished up our soup on time. These are certainly possibilities. But there is another one, not so laudable: that the neoliberal establishment will find substance, in Boo’s book, for their wider narrative of why the government can only ever fail, and why retracting the already-thin cover of publicly funded programs remains the best bet for getting India back on track.