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The Secret Life of India's Slums
What Katherine Boo's new book teaches us about the country's sky-rocketing inequality.
The slum of Annawadi in Mumbai is important only to those who live there. To the affluent Indians and foreigners who fly in and out of the city’s airport just next door, Annawadi is essentially invisible. Its 3,000 residents are a source of cheap labor, an annoyance at most. Something to turn away from.
But to Pulitzer-winning reporter Katherine Boo, Annawadi and its people are part of a globally important story. Boo, a New Yorker staffer and Macarthur grant recipient who has written widely on poor communities in the United States, spent three and a half years immersed in the lives of Annawadi’s residents – trash pickers, hopeful students, prostitutes, and small-time power brokers.