17. A School, a Hospital, a Cricket Field
âIn mid-May, the election results came in. The reform-minded elites had not turned out to vote, after all. Most of the incumbent parliamentarians were reelected, they returned the prime minister to office, and the radical improvements in governance promised before the voting were quietly shelved. A few weeks later, the bulldozers of the airport authority began to move across the periphery of Annawadi.
The Beautiful Forever wall came down, and in two days, the sewage lake that had brought dengue fever and malaria to the slum was filled in, its expanse leveled in preparation for some new development.
Related Quotes
PART TWO: the business of burning
6. The Hole She Called a Window
âNo onlooker asked, Why fix a house where the airport authority might demolish it? Almost
everyone here improved his hut when he was able, in pursuit not just of better hygiene and protection from the monsoon but of protection from the airport authority. If the bulldozers came to flatten the slum, a decent hut was seen as a kind of insurance. The state of Maharashtra had promised to relocate those families who had squatted at the airport since 2000 to tiny apartments in high-rises. To Annawadians, a difficult-to-raze house increased the odds that a familyâs tenure on airport land would be acknowledged by the relocation authorities. And so they put their money into what would be destroyed.
8. The Master
âNow it poured, a stinging rain. On the high grounds of the liquid city, rich people spoke
of the romance of monsoon: the languorous sex, retail therapy, and hot jalebis that eased July into August. At Annawadi, the sewage lake crept forward like a living thing. Sick
water buffalo nosed for food through mounds of wet, devalued garbage, shitting out the consequences of bad choices with a velocity Annawadi water taps had never equaled. People, also sick, stamped the mud from their feet and said, âMy stomach is on fire, my chest.
PART THREE: a little wilderness
10. Parrots, Caught and Sold
âSunil did want to be something, but it didnât seem to him that a municipal school education gave Annawadi boys better opportunities. Those who finished seventh or eighth grade just ended up scavenging, doing roadwork, or boxing Fair and Lovely lotion in a factory. Only boys who went to private schools had a chance to finish high school and go to college.
When Sunil and Sonu returned to Annawadi from their garbage-gathering, they stopped talking, and their hips no longer bumped together as they walked.
13. Something Shining
âThe deranged scavenger who talked to the luxury hotels stopped accusing the Hyatt of plotting to kill him. Instead, he pleaded to its nonreflective blue-glass front, âI do so much work, Hyatt, and earn so little. Will you not take care of me?ââ (Boo, âBehind the Beautiful Foreversâ,
15. Ice
Mumbaiâs wealthy were also hopeful in the months after the terrorist attacks. Many
had begun to engage in politics for the first time, intent on bringing about government reform. Rich Indians typically tried to work around a dysfunctional government. Private
security was hired, city water was filtered, private school tuitions were paid. Such choices had evolved over the years into a principle: The best government is the one that gets out of the way.
The attacks on the Taj and the Oberoi, in which executives and socialites died, had served as a blunt correction. The wealthy now saw that their security could not be requisitioned privately. They were dependent on the same public safety system that ill served the poor.
Ten young men had terrorised one of the worldâs biggest cities for three days â a fact that had something to do with the ingenuity of a multi-pronged plot, but perhaps also to do with the government agencies that had been operating as private market-stalls, not as public guardians. The crisis-response units of the Mumbai Police lacked arms. Officers in the train station didnât know how to use their weapons, and ran and hid as two terrorists killed more than fifty travelers. Other officers called to rescue inhabitants of a besieged maternity hospital stayed put at police headquarters, four blocks away. Ambulances failed to respond to the wounded. Military commandos took eight hours to reach the heart of the financial capital â a journey that involved an inconveniently parked jet, a stop to refuel, and a long bus ride from the Mumbai airport. By the time the commandos arrived in south Mumbai, the killings were all but over.
Parliamentary elections would be held at the end of April, and middle- and upper-class people, especially young people, were registering to vote in record numbers. Affluent, educated candidates were coming forward with platforms of radical change: accountability, transparency, e-governance. While independent India had been founded by high-born, well-educated men, by the twenty-first century few such types stood for elections, or voted in them, since the wealthy had extra-democratic means of securing their social and economic interests. Across India, poor people were the ones who took the vote seriously. It was the only real power they had.
16. Black and White
âTriumphant, Asha felt confirmed in a suspicion sheâd developed in her years of multi-directional, marginally profitable enterprise. Becoming a success in the great,
rigged market of the overcity required less effort and intelligence than getting by, day to day, in the slums. The crucial things were luck and the ability to sustain two convictions: that what you were doing wasnât all that wrong, in the scheme of things, and that you werenât all that likely to get caught.
âOf course itâs corrupt,â Asha told the deferential new secretary of the nonprofit.
âBut is it my corruption? How can anyone say I am doing the wrong when the big people did all the papers â when the big people say that itâs right?