The Slumdogs Blog

India is uncomfortable with Slumdog Millionaire. Uncomfortable with the success and awards that the film is garnering. Uncomfortable that it portrays or reveals a side of India that Indians are increasingly out of touch with. Uncomfortable that it is not an Indian film but seems to capture a quality of India and Indian lives that staple bollywood fare largely ignores.

First it was "Big B"  (Amitach Bachan) railing against the film on his blog (how contemporary) then old style Bollywood producer Mahesh Bhatt declaring, "This isn't best or better than any of the cherishing films made by our filmmakers. Why should we get excited when it's not an Indian Film and even if it wins Oscars, it is of no use to India. It is a British Filmmaker's flick and he has accomplished his dreams roping in India's best personalities to work with. There were more films where actors like Anil Kapoor and Irrfan Khan had spelled their best works and yet went unrecognised. Moreover, the Oscars hadn't been plainly nominated for Indian Films for superior quality in the category of Foreign Films."

Some of this is plain jealousy and some of it the continued anxiety between the new go-go India of BMWs and Vogue India Magazine and the reality that for many Indians the economic boom has passed them by. Despite laws to the contrary, poor children remain vulnerable to exploitation and it is in the slums and on the edges of the slums that  such vulnerability if most keenly felt. 

It is not for nothing that a central theme of the film is money - its lack and the impact of its excess. The closing scene reflects three simultaneous images: one brother dying in a bath of money, the celebration of poor Indians at one of their number escaping poverty and the loneliness of the main character in the railway station ( a place where journeys start and stop).

The drivers of homelessness are many, but surely the preeminent among them is Money.