When Salim and Jamal board a train to escape from the crooks in Danny Bole’s Slumdog Millionaire, they leave Lathika behind who is sold and she ends up in the red light area of Mumbai. In real life too, Rubina, who plays young Lathika, according to a sting operation conducted by News of the World, was in the line of being sold by her father, Rafiq Queeshi, to their journalists who posed as agents for a buyer from the Middle East.
While the incident has created considerable noise, we would like to look into two important aspects. First is that human trafficking, especially that of girls, is a crime so common that many of us are inured into a sort of acceptance and acquiescence. From beggar girls to part-time maids, labourers to child brides, from the acrobat in the circus to the girl in the local bar -- child trafficking is a crime that is often ignored, thanks to the lack of stringent laws and shoddy enforcement. A predominant notion that ‘children-do-not-have-rights’ and that they do not command a share in the vote bank politics of the day is best reflected in the fact that only 0.034 per cent of the Union budget (2005-’06) was allocated for the protection of children, who constitute more than 35 per cent of our population (Census 2001). A telling example of the helplessness and sheer volume of the problem we are facing is reflected in the Delhi government’s estimate in 2006 that in the city alone there were close to 7,00,000 girls working as maids.
Second is the sting by one of Britain’s most notorious tabloids. The journalists who conducted the sting will obviously feel good about it (they’ve created news, after all), but media houses need to ask whether exploiting the vulnerability of the underprivileged to create a sensation is what it’s all about. The tabloid that has pulled a quick one with a sure bait in the process was just reinforcing a stereotype that “Shockingly, this sort of transaction is far from unusual in an impoverished nation where human life comes cheap and children are often treated as a commodity. (NOTW)”
Journalism should not stoop to cater to satiate the voyeuristic exigencies of a section of the society that prefer paparazzi reporting. That the poor are lured into this net of trafficking is a fact and Rafiq happened to be among them.When stories such as Rubina’s catch the headlines, the first thing should be a prompt response from the government. So it is good to note that the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights is taking cognisance of the issue, but what about the millions of Rubinas who are forced into child marriage, camel jockeying and drug pushing?
Showing posts with label Slumdog Millionaire. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Slumdog Millionaire. Show all posts
Monday, 27 April 2009
Friday, 23 January 2009
Bollywood denies Boyle’s mirage on Mumbai
I cannot recollect when I first heard about Danny Boyle’s Slumdog Millionaire. It caught my attention after I heard Jaya Ho on MTV and saw that the film was creating ripples on the international circuit by winning four Golden Globes, three Chicago Film Critics Award, three Satellite Awards, 10 Academy Award nominations and 11 nominations for the BAFTA Awards among many other laurels. Reviews have praised the treatment of the film as unique and refreshing.
It may be an inane notion to contradict popular choice, but I refused to believe Slumdog was a good film. As though we don’t have enough of them, the promos showed Anil Kapoor as a quizmaster in a TV game show, with slum children running throughout the montage.
In a week’s time Slumdog managed to do what every Bollywood film wants: attract the attention of a billion people. This in itself is an achievement given that most promising Bollywood masala films are received with a yawn. While movie buffs were praising Allah Rakkha Rahman’s music in the film, Indian film industry insiders were trying to work out how an Oliver Twist-meets-Richie Rich film shot by a foreigner had captured the imagination of the nation.
With fame comes foes and Slumdog is no exception. The detractors focus on two aspects. First, that it is being seen as an Indian/Bollywood film. Though the definition of an ‘Indian’ film is vague, Slumdog fails on certain prerequisites such as an Indian director and production house. But the film has other kinds of ‘Indian-ness’, an Indian cast, music director, co-director, milieu, and of course, a love triangle, hero-in search-of-childhood-sweetheart, betrayal and, even a dance sequence in a railway station. In that sense it is more Bollywood than Bollywood.
The second charge is the old whinge that when foreigners make a film on India they choose poverty. A theme that not many would want to associate with, a theme that India would not want to project to an international audience and a theme not many in Bollywood could relate to. As a veteran Bollywood director noted, from Satyajit Ray’s Pather Panchali onwards, filmmakers have eternalised poverty on screen.
Whoever raked up the issue might be unaware that almost all international indices on health, livelihood, maternal mortality, malnutrition and, female foeticide, infanticide and mortality, place India in alarmingly dangerous categories (India’s surplus of hunger, TNIE Jan 15). We can’t deny that.
The tempo of protest and reactions may have been different if the film had been made by Nagesh Kukunoor or Madhur Bhandarkar or Vishal Bharadwaj. The fact that a Briton has highlighted slums and poverty is a bitter pill to swallow.
The chances are that Slumdog, being a foreign production, would not have been noticed if not for the international acclaim. Recall Madhur Bhandarkar’s Traffic Signal released in 2007. It exposed the underbelly of our metropolises, but the cacophony we hear over Slumdog was not heard then. Bhandarkar’s film showed the murky side of city life in greater detail. In contrast, Boyle’s treatment has an almost innocent yet refreshing touch. One sees the joys of living in a slum — an aspect none of the ‘Indian’ films have captured. In that sense, it is about hope and optimism.
In an interview, Boyle said it was not poverty that attracted him to make the film but the ‘rags to rajah’ theme — a universal theme. But what if Boyle had been attracted to poverty and its omnipresence in Indian cities? Mumbaikars know that close to 60 per cent of them live in slums or ghettos alongside 10 of the Top-100 richest in the world, in many cases both sharing the same postal index number.
Maybe Slumdog has come at the wrong time. India as a nation is in denial. We are refusing to accept that our personal security (Mumbai 26/11), economic security (financial meltdown) and much-vaunted corporate growth (Satyam fraud) are like a mirage. Films seem to be the only comfort and Slumdog has invaded even this haven. We deny that the slums and life shown in the film are real and construe them to be a figment of the director’s imagination — a mirage the director has seen.
We surround ourselves with run-of-the-mill stories of love triangles. We prefer dancing jodis, re-incarnation and separated-at-birth tales. We forget that by taking these films internationally we show the world the India we prefer to see, the India we choose to acknowledge. By making films on India, others show the India they see and understand.
And we deny it.
(http://epaper.newindpress.com/NE/NE/2009/01/23/ArticleHtmls/23_01_2009_011_002.shtml?Mode=1)
It may be an inane notion to contradict popular choice, but I refused to believe Slumdog was a good film. As though we don’t have enough of them, the promos showed Anil Kapoor as a quizmaster in a TV game show, with slum children running throughout the montage.
In a week’s time Slumdog managed to do what every Bollywood film wants: attract the attention of a billion people. This in itself is an achievement given that most promising Bollywood masala films are received with a yawn. While movie buffs were praising Allah Rakkha Rahman’s music in the film, Indian film industry insiders were trying to work out how an Oliver Twist-meets-Richie Rich film shot by a foreigner had captured the imagination of the nation.
With fame comes foes and Slumdog is no exception. The detractors focus on two aspects. First, that it is being seen as an Indian/Bollywood film. Though the definition of an ‘Indian’ film is vague, Slumdog fails on certain prerequisites such as an Indian director and production house. But the film has other kinds of ‘Indian-ness’, an Indian cast, music director, co-director, milieu, and of course, a love triangle, hero-in search-of-childhood-sweetheart, betrayal and, even a dance sequence in a railway station. In that sense it is more Bollywood than Bollywood.
The second charge is the old whinge that when foreigners make a film on India they choose poverty. A theme that not many would want to associate with, a theme that India would not want to project to an international audience and a theme not many in Bollywood could relate to. As a veteran Bollywood director noted, from Satyajit Ray’s Pather Panchali onwards, filmmakers have eternalised poverty on screen.
Whoever raked up the issue might be unaware that almost all international indices on health, livelihood, maternal mortality, malnutrition and, female foeticide, infanticide and mortality, place India in alarmingly dangerous categories (India’s surplus of hunger, TNIE Jan 15). We can’t deny that.
The tempo of protest and reactions may have been different if the film had been made by Nagesh Kukunoor or Madhur Bhandarkar or Vishal Bharadwaj. The fact that a Briton has highlighted slums and poverty is a bitter pill to swallow.
The chances are that Slumdog, being a foreign production, would not have been noticed if not for the international acclaim. Recall Madhur Bhandarkar’s Traffic Signal released in 2007. It exposed the underbelly of our metropolises, but the cacophony we hear over Slumdog was not heard then. Bhandarkar’s film showed the murky side of city life in greater detail. In contrast, Boyle’s treatment has an almost innocent yet refreshing touch. One sees the joys of living in a slum — an aspect none of the ‘Indian’ films have captured. In that sense, it is about hope and optimism.
In an interview, Boyle said it was not poverty that attracted him to make the film but the ‘rags to rajah’ theme — a universal theme. But what if Boyle had been attracted to poverty and its omnipresence in Indian cities? Mumbaikars know that close to 60 per cent of them live in slums or ghettos alongside 10 of the Top-100 richest in the world, in many cases both sharing the same postal index number.
Maybe Slumdog has come at the wrong time. India as a nation is in denial. We are refusing to accept that our personal security (Mumbai 26/11), economic security (financial meltdown) and much-vaunted corporate growth (Satyam fraud) are like a mirage. Films seem to be the only comfort and Slumdog has invaded even this haven. We deny that the slums and life shown in the film are real and construe them to be a figment of the director’s imagination — a mirage the director has seen.
We surround ourselves with run-of-the-mill stories of love triangles. We prefer dancing jodis, re-incarnation and separated-at-birth tales. We forget that by taking these films internationally we show the world the India we prefer to see, the India we choose to acknowledge. By making films on India, others show the India they see and understand.
And we deny it.
(http://epaper.newindpress.com/NE/NE/2009/01/23/ArticleHtmls/23_01_2009_011_002.shtml?Mode=1)
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