Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Chapter 16 Summary & Analysis

Asha continues to try to rise above Annawadi, but none of her new schemes work in the first months of 2009. One of the policemen she sleeps with finds a new mistress, and even her connection to Corporator Subhash Sawant goes sour once Subhash is dismissed from his post when a judge finds him guilty of low-caste fraud. Despite the excitement and duties of the upcoming parliamentary election, Asha just wants to stay in her house and cry.

Manju is saddened to see her mother depressed, and she tries to cheer Asha, but Asha can’t let go of her long list of disappointments and she broods over the smallest slights. Asha’s competitive spirit had told her that she was winning because other people like the Husains were failing, but now Asha sees that she has not actually made much forward progress. She still lives in a small hut with an alcoholic husband in a neighborhood where people are starting to dislike her.

All of Annawadi starts to actively hate Asha when Asha tries to make a profit from the widespread fear that Annawadi will soon be destroyed by the airport officials. City officials in Mumbai are more focused on clearing the Annawadi slum than ever. Slum relocation efforts in other parts of the city have not relieved the problem, simply pushing slum residents onto other slums and reinforcing the issues of over-crowding. Mumbai needs Annawadi to be a success story to show that the city really is addressing urban poverty. Asha is angry that the slums are seen as a sign of backwards India, but she decides to see this sad news as a money-making opportunity.

Asha helps Annawadians sell their homes here to middle class Indians who think these houses will soon be valuable to the city government. Anyone who can show that they have been an Annawadi resident since 2000 is entitled to a tiny apartment with the prize of running water, which means that plenty of middle class Indians try to falsify papers to say they are Annawadians in order to take advantage of this luxury. Asha helps politicians buy her neighbors’ huts, until one young mother decides she doesn’t want to leave. The hut’s new buyer sends a gang of men to force the woman and her children from the house and all Annawadi watches as Asha does nothing to help this poor slum resident. Asha gains a reputation for ruthlessness and greed.

Asha becomes more cautious in her economic schemes, but she still gets involved in a government program that publicly claims it will educate all the poor laborer children of Mumbai and privately hopes to line investors’ pockets with government funds. Asha already has a properly registered non-profit license from a previous corrupt endeavor, so she is chosen to receive the government checks for this education fraud and distribute the money to the proper people. When the first government check clears, Asha feels that all her corrupt dealings have been for the greater good of her family.

Asha tells Manju not to worry about getting a job after her studies anymore, now that the small empire of fake schools will fund them for life. Manju is uncomfortable with this, but gives in when Asha uses some of their new money to get a computer and an Internet connection. Asha completely shuts down the Annawadi slum school Manju had been running, and Manju can’t help but feel that their punishment for this sin is coming—she has just read about the ultimate reckoning of Dr. Faustus for her English class.

Nearly half a billion people register to vote in the parliamentary elections that will choose the representatives – who then decide on India’s new prime minister. Annawadi’s representative will almost certainly be a woman named Priya Dutt, since she has a double advantage: she is not only from a Bollywood family, but her father held the seat she’s running for before her. Priya’s political party gifts Annawadi with new sewer covers to ensure their vote, then takes them back when they need more support in a larger Mumbai slum. The Annawadians laugh at this blatant corruption.

Voting rights are scattered and often withheld from the poorest minorities in India, such as Zehrunisa and Karam who have tried to register for seven years and been denied. Slum dwellers who desperately want to get on the rolls and prove that they are a legitimate part of a state that despises them go to Asha for help. Asha ignores them, having decided that being slumlord is far too much work for far too little profit. Asha’s corrupt school empire makes her a member of the middle class in India, at least in her imagination, and she does not have to pay attention to underlings in the slum.