Still living in the slums

On the surface of it, Slumdog Millionaire seems to bring it all together – a brilliant soundtrack, stunning cinematography and the feel-good storyline of a boy who both makes it out of the slums, and finds love. It has already picked up five Critics’ Choice Awards, four Golden Globes and seven BAFTAs, including best picture, and has been nominated for ten Oscars.

The problem with the film is that while it attempts to illustrate the tragedies of slum life – the horror of being forced into the underworld of gang war, murder, theft and prostitution – it glosses over the reality that for the vast majority of India’s slumdwellers there is no escape. There is no game show that will make everything better.

Indeed not even the chance to be in a film that’s on its way to making hundreds of millions in profits appears to change the lives of slumdwellers. Two children that starred in the film, Rubina Ali and Azharuddin Ismail, are from one of Mumbai’s slums. They have been paid £500 and £1,700 respectively for their work on the film but are still living in the same miserable conditions.

Reports say that Azharuddin is living under a tarpaulin with his father who has tuberculosis, after their hut was demolished during filming, and they have now spent all the money they made from the film on medication. Rubina lives nearby in conditions that are not much better.

Filmmakers Danny Boyle and Loveleen Tandan, and producer Christian Colson, have defended their treatment of the children. They say they have made arrangements to put them in school, pay the family £20 a month for books and food, and set up a trust fund that will provide a lump sum for the children when they turn 18.

But why have the filmmakers made such elaborate arrangements? Because it serves to cover up the fact that the children have not been paid the equivalent of what the other actors in the film were paid, and the glaring differences in wealth and class. Because the children are from the slums the filmmakers feel they are entitled to pay them a fraction of what they are owed.

The filmmakers argue that throwing a huge sum of money at the children would be destabilising and that “a conscious decision not to shower” the children with money was made because “they would not be able psychologically and practically to handle that.” This hypocritical and patronising attitude can only lead to the conclusion that the poor are stupid, and that when the rich throw them a few crumbs, they should thank them.

At the point in the film when Jamal wins the 20 million rupees, you don’t feel sorry for Jamal; you don’t think that because he’s from the slums he’s not going to know how to spend the money and that he’s going to get screwed over. Rather, you get the feeling that it’s brilliant he got a ticket out of the slums, and that he’s going to be alright. Why doesn’t the same apply in reality? The filmmakers should not be the ones to decide whether or not the children get out of the slums, but they do.

To say that the children are better off than they were before, or that their parents agreed to be paid that amount beforehand, or to make comparisons with the average adult wage in India, is to miss the point entirely. Though they may have a slightly different set of problems, the children are hardly better off than they were before. Their parents could not have known what kind of a contract to negotiate with the filmmakers, nor could they, like anyone else, have known how well the film would do. And to pay somewhat more than the average wage in India, already so low, in a multi-billion pound industry is to be expected. The point is that discrimination, poverty and inequality have not been challenged in reality.

While it’s hard not to like the film, it presents an implausible, distorted vision of the world, allowing the slums to be portrayed as positive. It gives in to the notion that the poor will always be there, so we need to take responsibility for them, and feel good about this. As for the filmmakers, the only responsible thing for them to do would be to pay the children equally; not simply more than they were getting before, or three times the average adult wage, but what they deserve. What is so radical about that?