Slumdog Inspires India's "Big Switch" TV Show

The 2008 release of the Academy award winning Slumdog Millionaire movie showing extreme poverty in India's financial capital was met by expressions of anger and embarrassment by the Indian elite.



Decried by many in the Indian media as "racist poverty porn" and condemned by Bollywood superstar Amitabh Bachan in his blog for showing India as "a third world dirty under belly developing nation (sic)", the movie Slumdog Millionaire was greeted by howls of protests in India. But it received wide acclaim in the West.



With the Indian reality TV series "Big Switch" focusing on poverty, it now appears that India's entertainment moguls see an opportunity in what has been called "poverty porn" to make big bucks. The first season began airing in October, 2009 and ended in February, 2010. The run was a big success with nearly 26 million viewers tuning in every week.

The show brings rich Indians to live with poor slum dwellers for two to three weeks, though it stretches "reality" by putting them in a dormitory specially built near shanties for the show, while cameras roll. "When you bring people from two clashing worlds together, it makes for great television," says UTV Bindaas chief executive, Zarina Mehta, as quoted by the Wall Street Journal. The show marks a new direction for Indian TV, which in the past has steered clear of plots that focus on the poor in India. "Even if you have a driver as a main character, he always turns out later to be a prince," says media critic Parsa Venkateshwar Rao, who writes for the newspaper DNA.

Here are some excerpts from the Wall Street Journal story on "Big Switch":

Ms. Mehta, the TV executive, recalls a scene she will never forget involving Siddhartha Khanna, 25, heir to a real-estate empire who admits he leaves his clothes where he drops them and has never cleared up a cup of tea. One of Mr. Khanna's tasks was to clean up cow dung with his bare hands, a chore he tackled without complaint. The points he earned -- which translated into 200,000 rupees ($4,350) -- would go toward helping his slum partner, Samir Pagare, set up an event-management company.

Siddhartha Khanna, heir to a real-estate empire, won the 'Big Switch' contest by doing such things as cleaning up cow dung with his hands.

"I did it because I wanted to help Samir, to give him hope. I want this program to build bridges, to make young Indians realize they can do a lot to help the poor realize their dreams," says Mr. Khanna, who went on to win the contest for his partner.

In India, the rich and poor rarely cross paths. More than 80% of people live on 20 rupees a day (43 U.S. cents) or less. Of the country's 1.17 billion population, less than 1% earns more than 85,000 rupees ($1,850) a month. On "Big Switch," many of the rich participants earn more than that. And some of the highest earners among the slum dwellers pulled in about 5,000 to 7,000 rupees ($109 to $152 a month).

Slum dweller Abhishek Kushwah, 24, wants to be a chef. He grew up in Mumbai's Dharavi, India's largest slum, in one room with his parents and two brothers. They share a single toilet with 60 families. Says Mr. Kushwah. "I'd thought the super rich were lazy and selfish but my partner put in a lot of effort to help me."

On the first day of shooting last October on the "Big Switch" set, the two sides viewed one another warily. Their first impressions were revealing. Most of the slum dwellers were overwhelmed at simply being addressed politely.

"I never dreamed that the rich could be so nice," says Ms. Gaekwad.

The second reaction was shock. "Dreamer" Neelam Dumbre, 18, gasped when she heard her rich partner, Bindi Mehta, a researcher with a television news channel, talk about her closets full of outfits that cost 40,000 rupees (about $870) each. Another slum dweller was speechless when her rich counterpart showed her the 110 pairs of shoes she'd brought for the duration of the show. And then there was Sunny Sara, a 28-year-old nightclub owner in Mumbai, who unpacked 60 T-shirts. "I had no idea the rich were so rich," says Ms. Dumbre.

"Slumdog Millionaire" inspired the creators of "Big Switch," but given the controversy that erupted in India over its graphic depiction of poverty, UTV Bindaas channel head Heather Gupta, a British national who moved to Mumbai six years ago, was determined to avoid any hint of "condescension or using the poor participants as circus freaks."

"We're not blaming the rich for anything, but we want to jolt them into paying some attention to poverty," says Ms. Gupta. It is very easy in India, she adds, to become inured to the plight of the poor.

Model and budding actor Adam Bedi, 26, says he was filled with admiration for the resilience, drive and resourcefulness of the slum dwellers. "They just get on with their lives without moaning about everything they haven't got," he says. "They really impressed me."

Ms. Suri, the former beauty queen, described the experience as humbling. "These conditions are a daily reality for millions and yet, in their struggle to survive, they manage to be cheerful and dignified."

The chasm between the two sides reopened on the last day of shooting in early December. The rich kids were impatient to get home, desperate for a hot bath and good food. The poor dragged their feet; the dormitory, bare as it was, was more spacious than any of the slums they had lived in. As everyone packed, declarations of undying friendship were made amid hugs, displays of genuine affection and exchanging of numbers.

Two weeks later, back in their respective milieus, many of the participants say they talk to one another on the phone occasionally. But once the common link of being on the show has gone, what connection will remain, and for how long?

Ms. Gaekwad has no illusions. "On the show the rich were great. But if I walk out on the road now and try to speak to a rich person, they won't respond," she says.

I think the popularity of reality TV shows depicting Indian poverty is a sign of a maturing society that recognizes the depth and breadth of extreme deprivation in economically resurgent India. And I hope this recognition will spur a more serious effort to alleviate the suffering of the world's largest population of poor, hungry and illiterate people.

Related Links:

Mumbai's Slumdog Millionaire

Poverty Tours in India, Brazil and South Africa

South Asia's War on Hunger Takes Back Seat

British TV Accused of Making "Poverty Porn"

Orangi is Not Dharavi

Bollywood and Hollywood Mix Up Combos

Grinding Poverty in Resurgent India

Slumdog Is No Hit in India

Pakistani Children's Plight

UNESCO Education For All Report 2010

India's Arms Build-up: Guns Versus Bread

South Asia Slipping in Human Development

World Hunger Index 2009

Challenges of 2010-2020 in South Asia

India and Pakistan Contrasted 2010

Food, Clothing and Shelter in India and Pakistan

Introduction to Defense Economics

Orangi is not Dharavi!

A recent report, compiled by Mumbai's Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation with assistance from the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), claims that while Dharavi, the setting for the Oscar-winning Slumdog Millionaire movie, has 57,000 families living in overcrowded huts with poor sanitation, Orangi on the outskirts of Karachi is home to more than a million people living in poverty. This report has been splashed across Indian and some Western news media without any independent confirmation of its content.

The fact is that Orangi is nothing like Dharavi in terms of the quality of its housing or the services available to its residents. This report appears to be nothing but a shameful attempt by Mumbai's municipality to hide its own inadequacies by diverting the attention of the world to the biggest city of India's neighbor and arch rival Pakistan. What is even more disturbing is how the UNDP has become a party to this misleading claim. This preposterous claim is also an insult to the memory of Dr. Akhtar Hamid Khan who organized Orangi Pilot Project (OPP) and tirelessly worked with the residents on self-help model to improve their lives.

Reacting to the report, Parveen Rehman, of the Orangi Pilot Project, told a reporter of the Telegraph that the word “slum” did not do justice to its hard-working people, who had developed their own welfare system.

“People are poor but they are not destitute, they’re working class. It’s one of the poorest settlements. People have arranged their own schools, clinics and water supply. They are a great example of people helping themselves.

Ms. Rahman is right in her assessment. Orangi is not really a slum today. But it started life as a 'kutchi abadi' or squatter settlement for the large influx of refugees in Karachi from East Pakistan (often mistakenly called Biharis) after the fall of Dhaka in early 1970s. It consists of an area larger than 25 square miles (versus 0.67 sq miles in Dharavi) with a population of over a million (versus over 700,000 residents of Dharavi). Most of Orangi's population increase in the last three decades has come from the growing rural to urban migration, particularly of ethnic Pushtoons from the North West Frontier Province (NWFP). Shanties have now grown into single or two level cement houses over the years and a large number of schools have been operating successfully, sending the poorest children into the best educational institutions of the city. A significant population of educated middle class has grown in Orangi. There are a number of small businesses and a cottage industry, started by budding entrepreneurs and funded by microfinance efforts in the area. The city of Karachi has built roads into Orangi to provide improved access for the residents. A hospital was built in the community in the 1990s. While Dharavi has only one toilet per 1440 residents and most of its residents use Mahim Creek, a local river, for urination and defecation, Orangi has an elaborate sanitation system built by its citizens. Under Orangi Pilot Project's guidance, between 1981 and 1993 Orangi residents installed sewers serving 72,070 of 94,122 houses. To achieve this, community members spent more than US$2 million of their own money, and OPP invested about US$150,000 in research and extension of new technologies. Orangi pilot project has been admired widely for its work with urban poor.

Like any other growing and poor urban neighborhood, Orangi has its share of problems. Pollution, crime, corruption and political volatility are just some of the issues confronting Orangi residents. A large underground economy flourishes in Ornagi.

While the deplorable motivations of the Mumbai city authorities are clear, it is the UNDP that is doing a great disservice to its mission by joining with the BMC in defaming the highly laudable work of the ordinary citizens of Orangi and the OPP in Karachi.

Here's a video clip of Indian environment minister Jairam Ramesh saying "if there was a Nobel Prize for dirt and filth, India would win it hands down":




Related Links:

Informal Economy Estimates

Light a Candle, Do Not Curse Darkness

Urbanization in Pakistan Highest in South Asia

Orangi Pilot Project

Orangi Beats Dharavi

Can Slumdog's Success Improve Lives of Poor Children?

Dr. Akhtar Hameed Khan

Can Slumdog's Success Improve Lives of Poor Children?

Not only has the low-budget movie "Slumdog Millionaire" drawn big crowds in the West and taken in more than $ 100m at the box office, the movie has won eight Oscars last night, including the Academy awards for the Best Picture and the Best Director. The Best Music and Best Song awards went to India's musician A.R. Rahman, known as the Mozart of Madras. Rahman enthralled his celebrity audience at Kodak theater as well as the international viewers with his live performance of the popular songs "O Saya" and "Jai Ho" from Slumdog.

Half the world away in the early morning hours in Mumbai, the Garib Nagar crowd was particularly excited because several children from the area, including Rubina Ali, 9, and Azharuddin Mohammed Ismail, 10, starred in "Slumdog Millionaire," playing the roles of "young Latika" and "young Salim" respectively. "Woo-hoo!" they screamed, alternately chanting, cheering and bursting into singing "Jai Ho" the theme song of the film, according to ABC News.

After the well-deserved success of the well-made Slumdog movie, will the lives of poor children in Mumbai improve? Can this extraordinary focus on child poverty translate in to positive actions to reduce poverty around the world? These are the most important questions on the minds of many after the euphoria in Los Angeles.


Decried by many as "racist poverty porn" and condemned by Bollywood superstar Amitabh Bachan in his blog for showing India as "a third world dirty under belly developing nation (sic)", the movie Slumdog Millionaire has been greeted by howls of protests in India. But it has been widely acclaimed in the West. It is sparking international interest in the vast slums of Mumbai. With the box office success of the film, there have been charges of child exploitation against Slumdog producer and director which have been denied by Danny Boyle. “The actors were paid very well. We have not released any figures — either what they were paid or what they will receive when they complete their education — because it would make them vulnerable to certain elements, because they are quite large sums of money.”

Reports suggest the stars are entitled to a trust fund if they have remained in education for a certain length of time. The production company wanted to make sure the child actors would benefit from a decent education as well as the money, he said.

Slumdog was not the only Academy Award contender focusing on poverty, squalor and its effects in India. Another documentary "The Final Inch" -- also nominated for an Academy Award -- takes a real-life look at India's slums. The film explores the final battle against polio, a largely forgotten disease that continues to ravage the world's poorest areas -- areas that the Hollywood feature so graphically depicts.

Poverty tours in India, Brazil and South Africa are not an entirely new phenomenon. Favela tours in Rio De Janeiro in Brazil and South African shanty town tours have attracted tourists for years. It is primarily the popular Slumdog Millionaire, nominated for 10 Oscars including Best Picture award, that is translating to more rubberneckers in the Mumbai, India, slum where it was filmed — and is re-igniting a debate over the ethics of "poverty tourism", according to USA Today. Chris Way, the co-founder of Reality Tours that operates the poverty tour of the Mumbai slum, estimates that sales are up by about 25% since Slumdog Millionaire's release. Though he credits some of the increase to a gradual rebound in tourism after terrorist attacks in Mumbai killed more than 170 people in November, publicity surrounding the film has played a big role.

The tours have come under criticism for exploiting poverty. But Way defends his tours as a way to help the poor in Mumbai. In India, "a lot of people think the movie is 'poverty porn,' " says Way, a Brit who has lived in Mumbai since 2004. But any criticism of his tours "comes from misunderstanding what we are trying to do … break down the negative image of slums, (and) highlight the industry and sense of community." Reality Tours charges $10 or $20 a person, depending on length of the tour, and pledges to donate 80% of after-tax profits to local charities. Though the business hasn't yet cleared a profit, it paid for a community center.




Child poverty is not unique to India. MSNBC recently reported that the worsening economy in Pakistan is especially taking its toll on children and some are being abandoned by their parents. The report highlighted the case of three mothers who could not afford to feed their children. "The three women came together to my center," Bilquis Edhi of Edhi Center said. "They asked me to please take their children; they could no longer feed them."

"The mothers were sobbing as they tried to leave the children and the children were crying clinging to their mothers," Edhi said. "It was heart wrenching to watch."

While the news of abandoned or begging children offers only a small anecdotal evidence of the sorry state of Pakistani children, the official data paints an equally grim picture. Ranked at 136 on a list of 177 countries, Pakistan's human development ranking remains very low. Particularly alarming is the low primary school enrollment for girls which stands at about 30% in rural areas, where the majority of Pakistanis live. In fact, the South Asia average of primary school enrollment is pulled down by Pakistan, the only country in all of Asia and the Pacific with the lowest primary enrollment rate of 68 per cent in 2005. This is 12 percentage points lower than that of Maldives, which, at 80 per cent, has the second lowest rate in Asia and the Pacific. Low primary enrollment rate and poor health of children in Pakistan raise serious concerns about the future of the nation in terms of the continuing impact of low human development on its economic, social and political well-being.

According to Asia Children's Rights report, about 8 million Pakistani children, or 40 percent of the total population of children under the age of 5, suffer from malnutrition. About 63 percent of children between 6 months and 3 years have stunted growth and 42 percent are anemic or underweight. Poor nutrition leaves these children vulnerable to diseases. Pakistan is among the few countries of the world where Polio is still endemic. Poor conditions extend to the education sector as well. Over 23 million children in Pakistan have never been to school. The International Labor Organization data shows 3.3 million children, between the ages of 5 and 14 years in Pakistan, are forced to work rather than attend school. A quarter of a million of them work as domestic servants. The most recent United Nations Human Development Report indicates that the youth literacy rate in Pakistan is an abysmal 58 percent, among the lowest in the world. Sexual abuse is another problem. Homelessness of children is quite common. Over 10,000 children below the age of 15 live on the streets and sidewalks of Karachi alone. Many of them are forced to beg for survival. Most of these children say they left home because of domestic violence and family financial problems, according to Edhi Foundation which cares for some of them. According to a report by Amnesty International, there are more than 4,500 juvenile prisoners in Pakistani jails and 66 percent of them are being tried. Juvenile detainees are kept with adults, leaving them vulnerable to sexual and physical abuse.

I hope that the growing interest in Mumbai slums goes beyond a temporary fad and a fleeting voyeuristic exercise. This extraordinary interest should translate into action to help the people of the slums escape the abject poverty and squalor that define them and their daily existence. Jeff Greenwald, executive director of EthicalTraveler.org, put it well when he spoke with USA Today. "If one takes such a tour out of a genuine desire to learn and a passion for social justice, the experience can be valuable, eye-opening, even life-changing. If one goes as a spectator, it's little different than a visit to the zoo," he said.

This opportunity of global interest in child poverty should not be wasted. Instead, it should spur the Slumdog director to set up a foundation with some of the proceeds from the film to champion the cause of poor children with UNICEF in South Asia and the rest of the world.

A recent issue of San Jose Mercury News has a pictorial about grinding poverty in India done by John Boudreau and Dai Sugano. This heartbreaking pictorial illustrates the extent of the problem that India faces, a problem that could potentially be very destabilizing and put the entire society at the risk of widespread chaos and violence.

Here's a video clip from the Mercury News story:



Here's a video clip on world poverty:



Slumdog child actors at the Oscars:



Please make your contribution to the Hunger Project or Hidaya Foundation or Edhi Foundation or UNICEF to help alleviate child hunger and poverty in South Asia.


Related Links:

Mumbai's Slumdog Millionaire

Poverty Tours in India, Brazil and South Africa

South Asia's War on Hunger Takes Back Seat

Bollywood and Hollywood Mix Up Combos

Grinding Poverty in Resurgent India

Pakistani Children's Plight

Poverty in Pakistan

Poverty Tours in Resurgent India

Decried by many as "racist poverty porn" and condemned by Bollywood superstar Amitabh Bachan in his blog for showing India as "a third world dirty under belly developing nation (sic)", the movie Slumdog Millionaire has been greeted by howls of protests in India. But it has been widely acclaimed in the West. It is sparking international interest in the vast slums of Mumbai. “Slumdog” may take in $100 million during its run in U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Media By Numbers LLC. The low-budget movie had $43.9 million in receipts before collecting 10 Oscar nominations on Jan. 22, 2009. There have been charges of child exploitation against Slumdog producer and director which have been denied by Danny Boyle. “The actors were paid very well. We have not released any figures — either what they were paid or what they will receive when they complete their education — because it would make them vulnerable to certain elements, because they are quite large sums of money.”

Reports suggest the stars are entitled to a trust fund if they have remained in education for a certain length of time. The production company wanted to make sure the child actors would benefit from a decent education as well as the money, he said.

Slumdog is not the only Academy Award contender focusing on poverty, squalor and its effects in India. Another documentary "The Final Inch" -- which has also been nominated for an Academy Award -- takes a real-life look at India's slums. The film explores the final battle against polio, a largely forgotten disease that continues to ravage the world's poorest areas -- areas that the Hollywood feature so graphically depicts.

Poverty tours in India, Brazil and South Africa are not an entirely new phenomenon. Favela tours in Rio De Janeiro in Brazil and South African shanty town tours have attracted tourists for years. It is primarily the popular Slumdog Millionaire, nominated for 10 Oscars including Best Picture award, that is translating to more rubberneckers in the Mumbai, India, slum where it was filmed — and is re-igniting a debate over the ethics of "poverty tourism", according to USA Today. Chris Way, the co-founder of Reality Tours that operates the poverty tour of the Mumbai slum, estimates that sales are up by about 25% since Slumdog Millionaire's release. Though he credits some of the increase to a gradual rebound in tourism after terrorist attacks in Mumbai killed more than 170 people in November, publicity surrounding the film has played a big role.

The tours have come under criticism for exploiting poverty. But Way defends his tours as a way to help the poor in Mumbai. In India, "a lot of people think the movie is 'poverty porn,' " says Way, a Brit who has lived in Mumbai since 2004. But any criticism of his tours "comes from misunderstanding what we are trying to do … break down the negative image of slums, (and) highlight the industry and sense of community." Reality Tours charges $10 or $20 a person, depending on length of the tour, and pledges to donate 80% of after-tax profits to local charities. Though the business hasn't yet cleared a profit, it paid for a community center.

With the expected attendance of the slum child actors of Mumbai at the Oscars tomorrow in Los Angeles, Way's company and Mumbai tourism are likely to get a further boost in the coming months. There is speculation that Azharuddin Mohammed Ismail, 10, and Rubina Ali, 9, both of whom were plucked from their homes in a Mumbai slum by director Danny Boyle and his team, will steal the show from the big glamorous stars of Hollywood.


Child poverty is not unique to India. MSNBC recently reported that the worsening economy in Pakistan is especially taking its toll on children and some are being abandoned by their parents. The report highlighted the case of three mothers who could not afford to feed their children. "The three women came together to my center," Bilquis Edhi of Edhi Center said. "They asked me to please take their children; they could no longer feed them."

"The mothers were sobbing as they tried to leave the children and the children were crying clinging to their mothers," Edhi said. "It was heart wrenching to watch."

While the news of abandoned or begging children offers only a small anecdotal evidence of the sorry state of Pakistani children, the official data paints an equally grim picture. Ranked at 136 on a list of 177 countries, Pakistan's human development ranking remains very low. Particularly alarming is the low primary school enrollment for girls which stands at about 30% in rural areas, where the majority of Pakistanis live. In fact, the South Asia average of primary school enrollment is pulled down by Pakistan, the only country in all of Asia and the Pacific with the lowest primary enrollment rate of 68 per cent in 2005. This is 12 percentage points lower than that of Maldives, which, at 80 per cent, has the second lowest rate in Asia and the Pacific. Low primary enrollment rate and poor health of children in Pakistan raise serious concerns about the future of the nation in terms of the continuing impact of low human development on its economic, social and political well-being.

According to Asia Children's Rights report, about 8 million Pakistani children, or 40 percent of the total population of children under the age of 5, suffer from malnutrition. About 63 percent of children between 6 months and 3 years have stunted growth and 42 percent are anemic or underweight. Poor nutrition leaves these children vulnerable to diseases. Pakistan is among the few countries of the world where Polio is still endemic. Poor conditions extend to the education sector as well. Over 23 million children in Pakistan have never been to school. The International Labor Organization data shows 3.3 million children, between the ages of 5 and 14 years in Pakistan, are forced to work rather than attend school. A quarter of a million of them work as domestic servants. The most recent United Nations Human Development Report indicates that the youth literacy rate in Pakistan is an abysmal 58 percent, among the lowest in the world. Sexual abuse is another problem. Homelessness of children is quite common. Over 10,000 children below the age of 15 live on the streets and sidewalks of Karachi alone. Many of them are forced to beg for survival. Most of these children say they left home because of domestic violence and family financial problems, according to Edhi Foundation which cares for some of them. According to a report by Amnesty International, there are more than 4,500 juvenile prisoners in Pakistani jails and 66 percent of them are being tried. Juvenile detainees are kept with adults, leaving them vulnerable to sexual and physical abuse.

I hope that the growing interest in Mumbai slums goes beyond a temporary fad and a fleeting voyeuristic exercise. This extraordinary interest should translate into action to help the people of the slums escape the abject poverty and squalor that define them and their daily existence. Jeff Greenwald, executive director of EthicalTraveler.org, put it well when he spoke with USA Today. "If one takes such a tour out of a genuine desire to learn and a passion for social justice, the experience can be valuable, eye-opening, even life-changing. If one goes as a spectator, it's little different than a visit to the zoo," he said.

This opportunity of global interest in child poverty should not be wasted. Instead, it should spur the Slumdog director to set up a foundation with some of the proceeds from the film to champion the cause of poor children with UNICEF in South Asia and the rest of the world.

A recent issue of San Jose Mercury News has a pictorial about grinding poverty in India done by John Boudreau and Dai Sugano. This heartbreaking pictorial illustrates the extent of the problem that India faces, a problem that could potentially be very destabilizing and put the entire society at the risk of widespread chaos and violence.

Here's a video clip from the Mercury News story:



Here's a video clip on world poverty:



Please make your contribution to the Hunger Project or Hidaya Foundation or Edhi Foundation or UNICEF to help alleviate child hunger and poverty in South Asia.


Related Links:

Mumbai's Slumdog Millionaire

Poverty Tours in India, Brazil and South Africa

South Asia's War on Hunger Takes Back Seat

Bollywood and Hollywood Mix Up Combos

Grinding Poverty in Resurgent India

Pakistani Children's Plight

Bollywood and Hollywood Create Combos

Bollywood and Hollywood are joining forces to produce a whole slew of hybrid movies with money, stars and scripts flowing in both directions. The motivation is clear: Both purveyors of entertainment are looking to expand their audiences. "It's the right time for these two giants to shake hands," Mr. Vidhu Vinod Chopra, Indian writer and director, told the Wall Street Journal, adding that Hollywood stands to benefit from India's large movie audiences. "We have stars like Aamir Khan, who has more eyeballs than Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt, anybody."

Though it is dwarfed by Hollywood's $10b in sales last year, India's domestic film industry is growing much faster at 15% annually and is projected to hit $4 billion by 2012, up from $1.9 billion in 2007, according to PricewaterhouseCoopers.

Wall Street Journal is reporting a number of joint projects currently in development: Screenwriter Paul Schrader, famous for such films as "Taxi Driver" and "Raging Bull," is working on a thriller with an Indian producer. Sylvester Stallone will appear in "Kambakkht Ishq," or "Incredible Love," an action-filled comedy shot in Los Angeles and starring Akshay Kumar. Indian film mega star Shahrukh Khan is producing and starring in a superhero film that will be co-written by American and Indian screenwriters and digitally souped up by American special-effects technicians.

The critical or commercial success of such projects, however, remains a big question mark based on the reception of the recent releases of Slumdog Millionaire and Chandni Chowk. While Slumdog Millionaire grossed about $70m in America and received nominations for many of the most prestigious Hollywood awards, it was greeted by howls of protests in India. Bollywood's biggest superstar of all time, Amitabh Bachchan, scolded Slumdog producers on his blog for showing India as "a third world dirty under belly developing nation (sic)" when poverty can be found in rich countries as well. Contrast that with Chandni Chowk's miserable performance, with less than a million dollars gross in spite of being released on 125 screens, the biggest ever Bollywood release in America. Chandni Chowk was considered an average draw at the Indian box office, with Rs. 400 million in ticket sales.

American audiences may not warm to Indian-style kitschy, song-and-dance sequences and melodramatic staples. In 2007, Columbia Tri-Star funded and produced "Saawariya," which failed to capture a wide audience in India and flopped in its limited U.S. release, earning $885,574 in American theaters. Executives at Sony Pictures, which owns Columbia, declined to say how much the film made in India but noted that they more than recovered their investment.

In spite the huge gap in taste between the South Asian and American audiences, it would be hard to dismiss the new Indo-American hybrid film genre, given the amount of talent, money and serious interest by the big studios and investors in Los Angeles and Mumbai going in to make it a success. It will be very interesting to see how such a wide gap is bridged by the undeniable talent on both sides.

Here's the title track for Chandni Chowk to China:




Related Links:

India's Bid to Extend Cultural Dominance

Mumbai's Slumdog

Harry Potter Versus Hari Puttar

Amitabh Bachan Slams Slumdog

Highest Grossing Bollywood Films

Highest Grossing Hollywood Films

Mumbai's Slumdog Millionaire

Based on Simon Beaufoy's screenplay adapted from a Vikas Swarup's novel, Slumdog Millionaire is a well-made movie by a British director Danny Boyle. The early part of it reminds me of Dickens' Oliver Twist. But that impression quickly changes as the story develops into more than an orphan's treatment and the tyranny of class differences.

The story revolves around the lives of two slum-dwelling Muslim brothers who lose their mother at a very young age when she is struck and killed by Hindu fanatics in an attack on a sprawling Mumbai slum. The brothers grow up while traveling across India and return to Mumbai when Jamal Malik (played by Dev Patel) insists on finding his childhood friend Latika (played by Freida Pinto). Upon his return, Jamal finds a job serving tea at a call center where he gets a chance to become a contestant and ends up winning millions of rupees in a TV quiz show "Kaun Banega Crorepati". The quiz show host Prem Kumar (played by Anil Kapoor) repeatedly ridicules Jamal as an illiterate chaiwalla and tries to mislead him to give wrong answers in a private encounter. When Jamal continues to make progress toward the big prize of twenty million rupees, the host turns him into the police on suspicion of cheating.

The opening scenes show Jamal Malik being interrogated and tortured by Mumbai police to confess to cheating in an Indian TV quiz show based on "Who Wants to be a Millionaire". Its a story of survival of the two brothers Saleem and Jamal Malik. In explaining to the police inspector (played by Irfan Khan) on how he got the answers to the quiz questions, Jamal tells the story in flashbacks that takes the two brothers across India as they escape an Indian Fagin who takes in homeless kids, cripples them and forces them to beg on the streets of Mumbai for his own profit.

Slumdog Millionaire is a boy-meets-girl story. But it is far more than that. It's a story of how a poor young person can survive and be educated by living life traveling, even winning big quiz competitions, without formal schooling. A sort of Forrest Gump story set in India. At its core, it is a social commentary on the treatment of the poor and the minorities in India. For those curious about how it ends, it does have a happy ending.

Boyle and A.R. Rahman have included M.I.A.'s "Paper Planes" from early on in production on the musical score, which appears along with an original track Rahman composed, "O...Saya," featuring Arulpragasam, daughter of a Tamil activist from Sri Lanka. M.I.A., who Rahman described as a "powerhouse" and Boyle hailed as "a gift" to the soundtrack gave brief film notes on some scenes to Boyle upon request during editing.

Talking about his experiences during production in Mumbai, Boyle described in an interview on NPR radio how thousands of people gathered every time he started shooting the film on the streets. Permits were delayed, then granted in the nick of time. "Large sacks of cash" funneled through the intermediaries did the trick each time.

The movie beautifully captures the lives of slum children of Mumbai in general, and the dangers and discrimination faced by Indian Muslims in particular. It is a movie worth watching at least once.

Here's a clip of the movie trailer: