A Review of Slumdog Millionaire Controversy

Well, it late to write anything about this movie because it has bagged all the major and powerful awards through out the western world. Still I feel compelling reasons to write my views now when all the controversies have virtually settled down. I am not writing about the movie itself but attitude of others so I believe this post still makes some sense.

First I would like to make this clear that I am not against the movie, nor I have any problem about the slums and poverty shown in the movie. This is one of the fact of India today that we, particularly so-called middle class, always on internet, believe that India does not face extreme poverty any more. But the ground realities are different. There are still millions of people living in slums and without basic amenities like drinking water, toilets, forget about education and healthcare. So there is nothing wrong if the movie shows this or try to make poverty as the background.

I will tend to say that it was a good attempt from a foreigner director to show slums in India. But I am unable to understand the hype about the movie. Some of the logics I have heard about the hype are

1- It shows the deep poverty in the slums that we seems to have forgotten.
2- It shows that there is still hope and anything can happen to anyones life.
3- Movie or the movie director has taken initiative to help the child actors by setting up some education fund etc.

My problem with the hype is that none of these is a compelling reason for such a hype. If child poverty, child prostituion and religious divide in the India is a reason than I differ from the critics that this was the best movie. I can name a few of movies made by other directors that have shown everything of these in a better way and more realistcially. watch Saalam Bombay by Mira Nair. It was made 20 year back but it had everything we saw in Slumdog. Probably it was too realistic. It showed that foriegners go to India to consume drugs. I do not mean to say every tourist goes for this purpose but a large number of tourist go to India for this purpose. It did not show that the American tourist gives tips in dollars even when their car is broken by some slumdogs.

The only merit I see is that it was made in English and a wider western community could watch the movie. That is good and perhaps it will increase the interest of the western viewers and the production houses to invest in Indian (to be precise Bollywood) movie industry.

But assuming that the lives of the child actors will change is beyond imagination. Yes, they will have good time for 1-2 years till they are in media. But after that they will be back to slums and no one even remember them. Their parents will have good time. They have cash cows for sometime and they do not need to work till their children get money from media or somewhere. These children will be exploited more by their parents for money. If changing life was so easy, people would have changed themselves. Anyway, in real life it does not happen.

My biggest problem is with the India media. Why they were appreciating this movie so much is beyond my senses. There was nothing new or really great to appreciate in the movie. Even the story and the questions of the contest were childish if not stupid. Most of the people on this earth have not seen US $100 in their lives, how come a blind in India new the answer. Just to let you know that $ is not official currency of India.

But I belive they appreciated because the people who go to watch this movie in the multiplexes these days have no clue about the real india that still lives in slums or villages. These few thousands Indians are not much different in their thinking and life style than their western counterparts. So I think it makes sense to them. perhaps we are becoming a country of only a few elite and rich english and convent educated people. What British rule of over 100 years could not do India, we seems to be doing ourselves in less than 100 years, To become western elite class.

Shame on us.