One of the unforgettable and
hard-hitting moments of the
award-winning British movie, Slumdog Millionaire, is, of course, when child Jamal, trapped inside an
Indian makeshift toilet, takes a last look at Bollywood superstar
Amitabh Bachchan's photograph in his hand and jumps through the toilet hole into
the pit below and emerges covered in feces and runs all the way thus to get the
autograph from his favorite star. Though the scene is a bit over-the-top and
romanticizes the hardship of slum-dwellers, it does convey the idea of the
existence of two Indias within the nation-state: the India of haves and the India
of have-nots. While the movie was the flavor of the awards season and
emerged holding a clutch of awards, including eight Academy (Oscar) Awards, it
did make quite a number of upwardly mobile Indians feel conscious and
uneasy about what has been the nation's worst kept secret: urban India's dirty
underbellyits slums and squalor. And it looks dirtier still when you look at
the gaping rich-poor divide.
Mumbai, where the movie Slumdog
Millionaire is set, provides the contrast: It is the commercial and
entertainment nerve center of India, accounting for
5% of India's GDP, 25% of industrial output, 40% of maritime trade and 70%
of capital transactions. It is home to the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE), the
10th largest stock exchange, and is the
headquarters of numerous Indian as well as multinational companies. It is
synonymous with Bollywood, one of the largest and leading film industries in
the world. However, Mumbai is also home to Asia's second largest slum,
Dharavi, which houses about 800,000 people, and more than 50% of Mumbai's
population lives in slums.
|
