The Slumdogs Blog

Were the child actors in Slumdog Millionaire exploited, or as one article put it; is there a there there?

The production company claims that they were paid 3 times an average Indian salary for a month's work and that a trust fund has been set up for them that will supplement their income after 18 so long as they attend school - something which Rubina Ali and Azharuddin Ismail (who play the youngest Latika and Salim) have never done. Both are from Mumbai slums similar to those depicted in Slumdog Millionaire.

The controversy seems to be as much as manifestation of press story mongering as genuine concern among the parents, both of whom seem to have rescinded their original stories of child exploitation.  The story gained traction in the London Telegraph newspaper who reported that the children's lives were even more precarious than they were before. The Telegraph reported:

"Azharuddin is in fact worse off than he was during filming: his family's illegal hut was demolished by the local authorities and he now sleeps under a sheet of plastic tarpaulin with his father, who suffers from tuberculosis. "There is none of the money left. It was all spent on medicines to help me fight TB," Azharuddin's father, Mohammed Ismail, said. "We feel that the kids have been left behind by the film. They have told us there is a trust fund but we know nothing about it and have no guarantees."

What seems apparent is that the experience of making the film has changed the children's world and that the film makers are going to have to develop a more coherent and structured plan to help the childen adapt to the two lives that exist for them now - the slums and the glamour of the film.