Billion of SlumDogs or Millions of Millionaire
Newton stole it from Joseph Raphson who published same method 50 years ago. Joseph Raphson was the original author of the method, but if that is the case why Joseph Raphson did not get credit, for one thing newton had better publicist.
So its all about the publicity and there is nothing better than negative publicity. Portraying India as dirty third word country did a fantastic job for Boyle. Unfortunately he don’t have guts to make a similar movie on Shanghai. Can Boyle make a movie on human rights affairs in China? No of course not because Chinese will dump him down very badly. We have a bright example of Chinese anger over an incident in which a shoe was thrown at its leader, Wen Jiabao during his visit to UK. China’s reaction was far harsher than when two shoes were thrown at former US President George W Bush, and consequently UK government official apologized for this incident. Why there is no such respect for India? The answer is simple, we Indians are biggest culprits. None other than Indians himself exploited most of weakness in Indian culture. People like V.S. Naipaul (India: A Wounded Civilization), Vikas Swarup (Q & A) or Aravind Adiga (The White Tiger) are just using their pens to derive award winning novels exploiting their Indian experince. We have problems, but tell me which country don’t have, US is moving towards a mass bankruptcy, Britishers are starving for jobs and as I mentioned Chinese are strugling for their basic human rights. Poverty is every where, you just need to see it, just because India is country of billion people you can see it in masses, that does not mean that character of India is poor. “Slumdog Millionaire could only have been made by a westerner” , give me a break. Who can say this- “Watch this. Then talk to me about India and about garbage and about too many people, about sadness and mutilation”, none other than a westerner. Comments like this show racial slur and prove how hopelessly blind westerner audience is to the reality of India. Don’t forget what India looks today is because it was ruled by British for more than 400 years. Most of third word countries are suffering because they were ruled by Britishers for longer period, and they only exploited these countries for their own benefits (exactly what Danny Boyle did by paying less to children acted in this movie). As Amitabh Bachchan wrote
If Slumdog Millionaire projects India as a third-world, dirty, underbelly developing nation and causes pain and disgust among nationalists and patriots, let it be known that a murky underbelly exists and thrives even in the most developed nations, It’s just that the Slumdog Millionaire idea, authored by an Indian and conceived and cinematically put together by a westerner, gets creative global recognition,
That is quite true, and the lukewarm response to the movie in India after all these controversies and negative publicity shows that Indians know the reality very well and they don’t want a western stereotyped mirror to see their reality. Take the example of call center sequence in the movie, it was done deliberately to show that “look we knew that this was India, and these are the slumdogs we are outsourcing our jobs to”, was it required? Some day western media may claim that “India could only have been ruled by a westerner”, this kind of thinking is pathetic, displays their superiority complex and growing insecurity due to increasing dominance of Indians around the world. India is a great country and most of weaknesses we have now are because of different invaders (or say looters like Britishers) came time to time. What ever weakness we have, we should stand with it and there is no reason to be defensive on this point, and for Danny Boyle India is not country of billion of slumdogs but it is country of millions of millionaire, each one of them are self made.
23 Responses to “Billion of SlumDogs or Millions of Millionaire”
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very well written..u said it all.
thanks tapas
Hi Abhishek,
Guru. I was really moved & impressed by your thought provoking blog. I must admit, I am not really into this blog reading thing & all..Infact it was the first blog I ever read.. I liked that u r so proactive & concerned. So I thought, even I would share some feelings on the same subject.
First of all, let me define this entire fiasco over Slumdog as “Xenophobia.” If Danny Boyle decides to make a movie on Mumbai Slums, every one makes hue & cry over this & when Dev Benegal, Madhur Bhandarkar make movies like Split Wide Open & traffic Signal, we say them creative & realistic Cenema.
Yaar, don’t you think, that since our country is making so steady a progress in all arenas, for once we should rise above this small thinking of western & eastern perspectives & admit that-yes there are some lacunae, which we need to fill.
Some body has rightly said that the only key to sustainable progress & development is to accept things & reality as it is & then strive to rise above it. Saying that- because somebody has ruled us for 400 years & looted us, we are backward & incapable of taking care-is again insulting your own dignity. One must remember, that whatever happens to me is solely my responsibility & I cant blame anybody for things happened to me.
If Danny Boyle is not capable of making movies on Shanghai & Chinese- facing human rights issue , then can anybody calculate & answer how many movies Bollywood has made on Indo-China War Of 1962 Vis-à-vis Indo-Pak wars..
I may have been judgmental here, which may not be very wise thing to do, but I sincerely feel that anybody who has problem with some farang making a movie on Indian issues- be it Mr Amitabh Bachhan or anybody else, does this only because of the pain & sense of guilty conscious, which these movies generates among the viewers.
Hence for me the most important thing is to get my house in order first, & if I have failed there, then I have no right to ask about the legitimacy & morality of entire world’s access to the ruins of it.
Prashant Pandey
hi prashant,
thanks for you reply. honestly speaking your opinion reflects other side of the coin, and I really appreciate that you expressed that without being judgmental . As I said I have no issues with Danny Boyle and his movie, but I guess there is no space for idealistic behavior here, we tried that for centuries. We have to be realistic, we have to be vocal and aggressive on the issues those affect our image outside.
Abhishek
Excellent article, keep it up
I ike this article…..Guru mast hai…
badi meharbani, shukriya
Why this resistance to reality? Have you read Adiga? Can you conscientiously deny anything that is described there? Well! then the problem is the awards….because they made known to the world of the ‘other’ side of a growing economy in the world, today.It is not in Indian culture to disclose family problems or in other words to wash dirty linen in public. That it perhaps why Adiga and Swarup ignite our anger. Can’t we as Indians swear to change this dark side of our country which has always embarrased us from the days of Ray’s ‘Pather Panchali’.
Yes we can….
There is no resistance to reality at first place, even I mentioned there are lot of problems and we need to stand with them. I will never read Adiga’s Book cause and I don’t need to read it. I myself came from a remote village in India and when I born there was no proper toilets, electricity and basic amenities in the village (that was 1985) and now everything is changed, it is changing slowly and we can not bring a makeover in 50 years, it will take time as we are country of billion people. If you look ugaly will you be ashamed to stand in front of the whole world? No not exactly. Everyone knows reality and what you will gain to show it again and again, only rewards and there will be no change on the ground level due to these movies or books. People like Adiga never understood the nerve of average Indian person who don’t have money to buy and read these books. If you read this book what change you can make, except being bookish nothing on ground reality. With swearing or inspiring lectures or humiliating the Indian people in a movie like this you can never bring the change. What we need is desire to change, which is already rooted there.
I could not agree more. I have avoided the movie very deliberately because it hurts my national sentiments. Most people in the West already have a preconceived notion about India. The outsourcing backyard cheap labor image in itself is a big blemish. Add to it movies targeting particular sections in the society for selfish personal gains. While some of the bright minds in the West will agree that the movie represents a very small fraction of what India actually is, for the majority of the westerners though, it paints a very very shoddy image of our country.
I don’t see a point here, 90%of world was ruled by Britishers so what that mean they all lack the dignity, for sure not. Dignity, Legitimacy, Morality- look good in books not in real life. “We Indians are biggest culprits” that is quite true, how we become judgmental about this post that itself describe our notions.
GREAT! I am bowled by your defense and I do agree that Adiga And Boyle are a few who knew how to trade the darkness of their country to light up their lives.
I see a point in your angst….The same individuals and many others of their kind really do not care as much as you seem to, about change in their (our) country.
YET>>you cannot dismiss these creations as worthless-
1. because there are many who are not aware ( or blind ) to this side of the nation.
2. the more noise the more it is heard
3. we Indians who are eternally obssessed with the westerner’s opinions ( and awards-Globe/Oscar &what not ) may finally change, if not for our sake, at least to be recognised by the ‘whites’.
I agree with every word you say [8)]
But then Do read Adiga…. and Thankyou, you actually helped with a paper i am preparing for a seminar on Adiga .(that’s how I got into your blog)
Good Luck
Keep writing. You sure have a thinking mind.
bahut sahi tiwari bhai.. aisa hin kuch thought provoking likhne ka hona chahiye.. keep writing..
wow tiwary that was something….good one…nice counter views also i should also congratulate other participants. everyone is right.
Its true that adiga ,boyle and many more in a kind of insult our country and i should say its not very bad that india does not react very strongly to these as china did. India has its own ways of doing things, every country has problems and so has India, but we do not mind if somebody says look how you are when we uncover you. everyone of us knows how we look naked but still we cover ourselves and try to call ourselves civilized, which is not atall wrong. its good to be humble and accept what you are but at the same time we should protect ourselves also which I think we do . there has to be a balanced approach just being a dictator like china wont help, it would be something like we all know…a chinese product looks very gud initially but in the long Run fails to prove being durable….i hope we all know why we use the term “CHINA MADE”.
dont worry guys the day is not far away when we will rise to being the Millionaire from the slumdog…u see everything has a life and death, India being a slumdog has completed its life and india being a millionaire is taking birth….the global recession kills US and Europe but india still projects a GDP growth of 7%(though we are also affected…but still less).
guys keep writing keep saying gud moral words but implement just 50% in actions and we will look beautiful…. even when we are Naked.
nice……article it is true i agree with you
you are right
nice article!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1
no doubt that article is very nice but yet i feel somewhere that the film actually mirrors the nation!!!
I have only question If you look ugly will you be ashamed to stand in front of the mirror? No, not at all so guess we Indians have habit to live with contradictions,
Yep…Well put post!!! Its now somehow become kind of a trend in the Western world to showcase India and other developing countries in poor light and then comment on them. What surprises me more is how these people donot want to or are predisposed to not put light on the brighter aspects of the so called Third World countries! Since they donot do it…its left to us from the Third World countries to showcase our brighter sides than blame these westerners!
Slum Dog Perspective Versus the Reality of Urban Poor in the Informal economy in Mumbai: A Micro Level Analysis in the Neo-liberalist Phase
Dr.T.V.Mathew
The stereotypes people hold concerning the urban poor in slums and the empirical reality differs considerably. What is at stake is the elitist conception of the urban poor as marginal. People tend to view them as marginal/as slum dogs and this perception underestimates the resourcefulness of the urban poor and affect/influence policy. The main objective of the research was to make an in depth analysis of the socioeconomic profile of the urban poor in the informal economy in Mumbai in the neo-liberalist context and to suggest a policy framework for the empowerment of the urban poor in the informal economy. The research is based on participant observation, focused group interviews and administration of a detailed questionnaire. The study concentrates on a survey of a single slum settlement in Mumbai, Shivajinagar in Mumbai and interviews with 300 heads of the households in Shivajinagar slum settlement. It was chartered as an attempt to learn from below the reactions of the micro population in one of Mumbai’s slums to the new economic reforms.
The study reveals that: informal sector activities represent a survival mechanism for the urban labouring poor in the informal economy. The study notes the economic activism of the urban poor in Shivajinagar as against the conventional stereotypes concerning the poor as marginal. The urban poor in Mumbai slums are not economically, politically or socially marginal. Prof Owen Lynch’s.study on ‘what do these flags stand for? demonstrated that the slum dwellers are politically organized and not marginal. The present empirical study in the neo-liberalist context indicates that the role of the poor in development is neither completely understood nor properly acknowledged. This micro level research has chosen to emphasize the integration of the poor into economic system as the basis for many of the current problems of this sector. Urban poverty in Shivajinagar is not a matter of individual income alone. This study reveals that household features, educational attainments, skill levels and employment characteristics have significant influence on monthly earnings. Deprivation of the urban poor in the informal economy is a consequence of difference in human endowments and human development. ‘Exclusion’ of the urban poor from access to income and basic services is an area that needs urgent policy attention.
This micro level study from Shivajinagar reveals that economic growth and employment opportunities themselves are not sufficient to improve the living conditions of the poor. The study shows that the urban poor also find ways of interpreting the uncertainties of their economic and social position which are compatible with an active attempt to cope with the day today problems of urban living. A human development approach is needed in the neo-liberalist phase to improve the living conditions of the working poor in Shivajinagar. Seen from this viewpoint development is about removing the obstacles to what a person can do in life, obstacles such as illiteracy, ill health, lack of access to resources or lack of civil and political freedom .
I wish a film depicting the economic activism of the urban poor in the midst of uncertainties, insecurities and vulnerabilities and exclusion is chartered by someone filled with moralism concerning the poor.