Disputes are an integral part of our daily lives. Both literally and figuratively, people are constantly stepping on each other’s toes.
That being said, disputes are not all created equal—some are more serious than others. The determination of the seriousness of a dispute is subject, and often contingent, on the context. No matter the seriousness, disputes follow different trajectories. That is, they have different lives. While some disputes fizzle out easily, others escalate; while some may end with verbal insults, others result in brutal violence that may sometimes prove fatal. Some are handled between the parties in the dispute, others require the intervention of other actors, including elders, religious leaders, or officials of the state. Expectedly, as I highlighted in my doctoral study, the handling of more serious disputes depends on the nature of the dispute and its effects, the social positions of the actors and the resources that the people in the dispute are able to deploy as they seek to resolve the matter.
Over the last few decades, social scientists have showed that disputes—and how they are handled—can reveal much about societies and states. The scholarship of Sally Engel Merry and Sindiso Mnisi Weeks, among others, is particularly useful in this regard. In her book Getting Justice, Getting Even: Legal Consciousness among working class Americans, Merry explores how ordinary Americans bring family and neighbourhood disputes to court, seeking justice or revenge, and the effects that these efforts have on the actors and the society more broadly. In her turn, Weeks examines dispute management processes in KwaZulu Natal in South Africa, showing the different trajectories that disputes take, the various actors involved and the logics that underpin the different strategies that they adopt in seeking to resolve disputes. What both scholars do well is to show how the trajectories that disputes take differ from what is expected as per the documented procedures of handling disputes and how the formal and informal processes blur. The work that these scholars, and others, have done, gives us a good starting point for understanding disputes and how they are handled in different contexts. They also teach us how to use disputes to read societies and states.
In this essay, I reflect on what we can learn from the life of a dispute through a review of Katherine Boo’s book Behind the Beautiful Forevers, published by Random House in 2013. Fitting with the genre of creative non-fiction, it is an incredibly captivating book that takes a very close look at life in Annawadi, a slum in Mumbai, India, that sits behind a concrete wall at the airport whose length was covered with signs of the promise of urban renewal that carried the slogan “BEAUTIFUL FOREVER BEAUTIFUL FOREVER BEAUTIFUL FOREVER”, hence “Behind the Beautiful Forevers”.
While Katherine Boo uses the term “slum” to refer to the neighbourhood that she is writing about, I prefer the term “urban margins” that has been used by scholars to refer to these zones of urban relegation where multiple forms of deprivation accumulate. These places that are often densely populated, are marked by a failure of infrastructure that is evident in the lack of piped water, open sewers, lack of public services (e.g., schools and hospitals) and poor quality, often makeshift housing. Often, these neighbourhoods are marked by the police as hotspots for crime, entrenching the stereotype of the urban poor as a threat to the safety and security of the well-to-do in the city.
To be clear, Boo examines disputes on at least two distinct levels. On one level, the book is an exemplar of the disputes between residents of the city over the right to the city; the poor versus the elite. She asks who the grand and elegant promises of urban renewal that we often see in the colourful billboards and glossy brochures that promise to turn our cities into global cities are for, and what they mean for the poor residents of the city. Just like Constance Smith observes in her book Nairobi in the Making: Landscapes of Time and Urban Belonging which is situated in Nairobi’s Kaloleni estate, Boo shows that these promises of urban renewal always carry the threat of the loss of home and livelihoods for the urban poor. Forced evictions, under the guise of turning the city into a global city, are a common phenomenon in Kenya and have been examined by other analysts like Mwangi Mwaura and Pauline Vata. Thus, even though Katherine Boo’s book is situated in Mumbai, there is much in her work that resonates with what happens in other aspirational cities in the developing world. On another level, crucially, the urban margins are densely populated. It is estimated that Nairobi has more than 40 areas defined as slums that house approximately 60 per cent of Nairobi’s population of 4.4 million people. Even though the veracity of these statistics is not easily verifiable, it is often said that 85 per cent of Nairobi’s population occupies just 5 per cent of the city’s land area. That is a lot of people in very close proximity.
Unsurprisingly, the frequency and intensity of disputes are directly linked to proximity. The closer people are to each other, the more likely they are to be in dispute with one another. Thus, Katherine Boo’s decision to locate her analysis at the urban margins is apt. Additionally, given the inadequacy of infrastructure at the urban margins, including housing, much of the lives of the poor unfolds in public, further accentuating the probability that disputes will emerge between neighbours at the urban margins. This is not in any way to suggest that there are no disputes between neighbours in more affluent areas of the city; there are. In fact, we know of disputes in affluent areas that have resulted in brutal murders and the killing of Kevin Omwenga in Nairobi’s Kilimani estate by his hitherto business partners is a case in point. Given that many disputes in affluent areas occur in private, behind closed doors, their prevalence is harder to assess. Similarly, it is hard to measure the prevalence of the interpersonal disputes at the urban margins. Nonetheless, we can rely on data on inter-personal violence as an indication of the levels of disputes. A study on violence at the urban margins of Nakuru County that I conducted with two colleagues revealed high levels of interpersonal violence, with sexual and gender-based violence and violence against children being particularly prevalent. To reiterate, this is not to say that disputes—or indeed violence—only occur at the urban margins, it is rather to suggest that they are probably more prevalent and more visible there.
A dispute in Annawadi
Behind the Beautiful Forevers revolves around three families. The first is Abdul’s family. Abdul is a young boy who has become an expert at sorting and selling garbage to recyclers, which prowess leads to the success of the business, shifting the fortunes of his family. He is said to have “bestowed on his family an income few residents of Annawadi had ever known”.
Unsurprisingly, this earns the envy of their neighbour Fatuma (the second family), a crippled woman who is derisively referred to as “One Leg”. Fatuma lives with her daughter while her husband works elsewhere. She is presented as a very promiscuous woman, with a sexual appetite that her aging husband is said to be unable to satisfy. As interesting as this theme of sex and how it is deployed in everyday negotiations in Annawadi is, it falls outside of my current analysis.
The closer people are to each other, the more likely they are to be in dispute with one another.
The third family is Asha’s. Asha is a local level political operative who has ambitions of becoming a slumlord and has learnt how to access state resources by being a conduit for corruption for state officials. Beyond providing access to the slum to wealthy people who want to buy land in anticipation of its demolition, her role—and attaining success in it in order to become a slumlord—requires that she gain legitimacy by helping people to access state officials, and resolving conflicts.
Since jealousy is at the core of this story. It warrants a bit more attention. From Boo’s work and my own research, it seems that envy, jealousy and suspicion are very common features of life at the urban margins. These themes recur in much of my own research in Kenya. Many of the young men who have been in trouble with the police that I interviewed for my doctoral study attributed their troubles to the jealousy of their neighbours. Some told me that they have learnt better than to buy new clothes or shoes for fear of causing jealousy among their neighbours. It is crucial to point out here that it is often not the jealousy itself that is the issue but rather how it interfaces with the brutal and ineffective criminal justice system that leaves the living in fear of being killed by the police. They aver that signs of material success are communicated to the police as evidence of their involvement in crime. To put it simply, combined with unconstrained state power, jealousy becomes a lethal weapon.
The saga at the centre of the book emanates from a dispute between Abdul’s mother and Fatuma that leads to the latter’s self-immolation. Ostensibly upset that sand from a wall that Abdul’s family was building fell into her dinner, after a bitter exchange of words, Fatuma locks herself in her home and sets herself on fire. However, she is rescued by her neighbours and taken to hospital. Despite there being witnesses, including her own daughter who called for help, Fatuma claims that it was Abdul’s family that had attacked her and set her on fire. The book opens with Abdul’s family reckoning with the difficulties that are about to befall them and strategizing on how to survive them, beginning with Abdul’s ultimately unsuccessful bid to escape.
From what might seem like an open-and-shut case to a casual observer, as lawyers are wont to say, the dispute transforms into a kind of vortex that draws many people into a lengthy, painful and destructive encounter with the corrupt Indian criminal justice system. The situation is worsened by Fatuma’s eventual death at the hospital. While technically she doesn’t die from the burns that she suffered but succumbs to a lung infection that she contracted at the hospital, this does not seem to matter, even were we to set aside the fact that Abdul’s family did not set her on fire. Thus, Abdul’s family find themselves facing a murder charge that unravels their lives.
This dispute becomes a powerful lens through which we can better understand the trajectory of disputes at the urban margins, especially when they unfold within the criminal justice system in the postcolonial world.
The corruption of the criminal justice system
There has been much scholarship in the post-colonial world that has emphasized how corrupt the criminal justice systems in those countries are. In Kenya, for instance, the state police has been consistently ranked by Transparency International as the most corrupt institution in the country.
Thus, Katherine Boo’s depiction of the Indian criminal justice system as corrupt does not come as a surprise. What the book does beautifully, however, is to present a powerful case study in just how this corruption unfolds in the day-to-day life of those at the urban margins.
Given that many disputes in affluent areas occur in private, behind closed doors, their prevalence is harder to assess.
Police corruption comes in many forms. One form is where police officers collude with thieves with whom they share the spoils. Boo records such claims in India, similar to the suspicions that residents of Githurai shared with me in my earlier work. That this theme has also been explored in popular culture—with the best example being the highly acclaimed film Nairobi Half Life—shows that it is widely understood as a feature of state policing in Kenya. Another form of police corruption is extortion. One form of extortion is where the police visit business premises regularly demanding to be paid bribes, a theme that I have examined at length in my doctoral study. Since people at the urban margins—in Annawadi and in Nairobi’s Kiambiyu alike—often engage in economic activities that are, albeit to varying degrees, illicit, they are often extorted by the police. Often, they have to pay to avoid getting into further trouble with the police and in order to be able to continue operating their businesses. For example, since Abdul’s business would not pass the test of legality, he has to pay bribes to the police regularly in order to continue operating.
The other form of police corruption we see unfolding in Annawadi is that of police demanding bribes so as not pursue the matter against Abdul’s family. Again, this comes as no surprise. In his work on policing in Nigeria, Olly Owen records his interlocutors claiming that a bribe can turn “black into white”. That is, for a small price, the accused can become the accuser. I have found similar sentiments amongst the people I have interviewed for my work in Kenya. The surprising element in this book that we often do not encounter in much of the literature on this subject, is the refusal of Abdul’s family to pay the bribe. They seem to have the sense that paying the bribe will not end their problems but will instead expose them to further extortion by the police. They decide to follow the process.
It is not possible for us to know what would have happened if the family had paid the bribe. Similarly, we do not know for sure that it was their refusal to pay the bribe that worsened their experience with the criminal justice system, but we can reasonably assume that it did.
Some told me that they have learnt better than to buy new clothes or shoes for fear of causing jealousy among their neighbours.
We also see police officers colluding with other state officials to corrupt the judicial process by overlooking evidence and twisting the facts and thus aggravating the situation. Boo documents how police officers colluded with doctors to generate fake evidence about the cause of death which they then presented to the courts. However, this fake evidence is not purely aimed at making the situation worse for Abdul’s family but also to solve bureaucratic problems, such as drawing what might be a complex case to a quick close (murders become suicides) or to avoid institutional responsibilities. For instance, the exaggerated extent of the burns on Fatuma’s body was to cover the fact that she died of an infection contracted while undergoing treatment at the hospital. What was recorded as 35 per cent burns at admission became 95 per cent when she died. Moreover, the process of obtaining documents that are required in court, such as death certificates, provides another opportunity for police officers to extort people. That is, if they pay, such documents can be altered or fail to make it into the court files. However, in some cases, it seems that the police officers’ insistence on bribes or the various demands they make may also raise the price so high that they make it imprudent, or even impossible, for their targets to pay. It seems that Abdul’s family may have been smarter for not acceding to the demands, as it was likely that the police would keep returning for more. In any case, at some point, the police dribble the ball off the pitch as, at a certain point, the matter has to go to court.
Even though Boo does not examine the corruption of the courts, she draws on Abdul’s experience in the garbage trade to observe that “The Indian criminal justice system was a market like garbage. Innocence and guilt could be bought and sold like a kilo of polyurethane bags.” At the risk of repeating myself, none of these findings will be surprising to anyone familiar with the criminal justice system in Kenya, and elsewhere in Africa.
Justice is expensive
The other issue that emerges very strongly in the book is just how expensive the resolution of disputes through state institutions is. In my Githurai study mentioned above and my subsequent doctoral research, my interlocutors noted that the expense they faced while going to courts related to both time and money. Boo illuminates this well in her book.
Through her masterfully crafted narrative, it feels as if the case, which one sees could be resolved quickly, lasts forever. Incredibly, the saga is still not over even as the book ends. While the judge finally finds Abdul’s family not guilty, Abdul’s case in the minor court drags on. This illustrates the inefficiency of the criminal justice system in India. A similar situation persists in Kenya. For instance, on the backlog of court cases in Kenya, it has been reported that nearly half (46 per cent) go beyond the three-year mark.
Boo presents the attempts by the Indian government to resolve the backlog by creating what are called fast-track courts. This is one of the manifestations of the “access to justice” reforms that have been promoted in developing countries and are shaping much of the investments in judicial reforms, including in Kenya and Uganda. Through this case, and in line with some of the literature that critically examines these developmental agenda, we see how these efforts are geared towards improving the efficiency of the courts without really examining the more fundamental questions of what justice is and how it should be dispensed. No matter how quickly they process the case, the fast-track courts will not provide an answer to the question of whether the verdict of “not guilty” for Abdul’s family amounts to justice, and if so, for whom. In other words, in our attempts to resolve the problems that plague our criminal justice systems, we tend to focus on fixing the processes without giving sufficient thought to the outcomes that the systems we have are designed to generate, and whether these align with what people involved in disputes want.
“The Indian criminal justice system was a market like garbage. Innocence and guilt could be bought and sold like a kilo of polyurethane bags.”
The dispute—and its aftermath—is very costly to Abdul’s family financially. For one thing, Abdul is not able to continue with his business while he is incarcerated. The business is left to his ailing father and younger brother who are not any good at it. For another, the family must spend their money to pay the lawyer who is defending them, draining all their savings.
In much of the discourse on the justification of the criminal justice system, we are often told that the rehabilitation of offenders is one of its key aims. We see one of the masters at the Borstal Institution where Abdul is taken advising him to stay away from crime and Abdul commits to this. However, avoiding crime or unscrupulous business does not help him get ahead but rather significantly limits his business while benefitting his competitors. In other words, his “becoming good” comes at the expense of the economic wellbeing of his family, at a time when they are already being further impoverished by the dispute that has engulfed them. Pointedly, Boo asks a question that goes to the core of what we must consider if we are indeed to think about justice. She asks, “If the house is crooked, and crumbling, and the land on which it sits uneven, is it possible to make anything lie straight?” To this question I might add, “And if so, at what cost and at whose expense?”
This fake evidence is not purely aimed at making the situation worse for Abdul’s family but also to solve bureaucratic problems, such as drawing what might be a complex case to a quick close.
What Boo is pointing towards here, is the fact that we cannot talk about justice in isolation. And, in a sense, this is where the two levels of disputes I noted earlier collapse into each other. The disputes between the residents of Annawadi must be understood in the broader context of the dispute for the right to the city. In this respect, Boo’s examination of the idea of opportunity becomes particularly potent.
The complexity of life in Annawadi that Boo presents fails to fit into the neoliberal logics that are so often the basis for commenting on life at the urban margins and the advice proffered to residents, mostly by outsiders, on how to get out. With respect to opportunity at the urban margins, Boo says that “In Annawadi, fortunes derived not just from what people did, or how well they did it, but from the accidents and catastrophes they avoided. A decent life was the train that hadn’t hit you, the slumlord you hadn’t offended, the malaria you hadn’t caught.” In other words, one’s life is not just in one’s hands as many do-gooders (read motivational speakers) would have us believe. The context maters. As Boo highlights here, the outcomes in people’s lives in the slum, quite often, come down to chance.
This is a powerful critique of the neo-liberal logic that suggest that what people need to get out of poverty is hard work and resilience, which is not to disregard the reality of the few that do. This book is a caution that even as we look at the narratives of those who make it out—the spectacular examples of success in the face of adversity—we must not miss the forest for the trees. We have to ask questions about the structural conditions that constrain the lives of people in the underbellies of our cities. We must ask what kind of structural conditions generate a context in which a disabled person can lie bleeding on the side of a road for hours—with absolutely no intervention whatsoever—until they die. We must then ask what kind of state only shows up after that person dies to collect the remains. The lives that Katherine Boo describes in her book are a testament to the observation that Judith Butler made a few years back that “the way that the state organises life produces some lives as more precarious than others”.
Weaponising the state
For some of the reasons that I have discussed above and others, scholars have noted that poor and marginalised groups have limited access to state institutions, including in the criminal justice system. On the one hand, the literature shows how poor people are constrained by many factors, such as costs, from accessing the criminal justice system when they have been victimised. On the other hand, we see literature highlighting the victimisation of the poor and marginalised by the criminal justice system, including disproportionate exposure to police abuse and higher chances of being convicted and jailed. In Kenya, for instance, legal scholars Patricia Kameri-Mbote and Migai Aketch, note how poor people’s lack of resources predisposes them to ending up in jail. However, before concluding this commentary, it is important to also point to the more complex ways in which people at the urban margins utilise the institutions of the state.
The disputes between the residents of Annawadi must be understood in the broader context of the dispute for the right to the city.
Katherine Boo, in a way extending the work of Sally Engel Merry, shows that the difficult relations that poor and marginalised people have with criminal justice institutions do not mean that they do not engage with them. To put it another way, to say that the urban poor have a limited and problematic access to the institutions in the criminal justice system is not to say that state institutions do not feature in their considerations of how to solve the problems they are facing. Even where poor people acknowledge the difficulties they face in pursuing justice through the criminal justice system, they sometimes place their bets on it for varied reasons. For instance, I have already noted how Abdul’s family chose not to pay a bribe and instead go through the formal justice process ostensibly to limit their risk.
What is often not highlighted but has been noted by some scholars recently is how, in their attempts to resolve their disputes, some poor people deploy the criminal justice system against their neighbours. In a study of access to justice in Uganda, Sara-Jane Cooper-Knock and Ann MacDonald noted cases of people finding ways of using legal processes to enhance their negotiating positions in disputes, even where they would want those disputes to be resolved outside the court system.
In Fatuma’s case, Boo gives a powerful, albeit extremely tragic example. Here is a case where someone is willing to set themselves on fire just so that they can exact revenge. The challenge here though is that the outcomes of such efforts are completely unpredictable. For instance, in Fatuma’s case, it went horribly wrong because she caught an infection in the hospital and died, and people’s lives began to unravel.
It turns out that we can learn a lot about a society and a state from a dispute. In this case, Katherine Boo presents us with a case where, as she puts it, “the most wretched tried to punish the slightly less wretched by turning to a justice system so malign it sank them all.”
