By Joseph D’souza

March 2009

Far from exploiting poverty, these are stories about India which demand a global response – especially for the sake of the children.

Indian outcastes

This is the India of 80 percent of the population – the India of the slums, the outcastes, the exploited, and of abject poverty.

The India where Dalit, tribal and poor children are sold into the sex trade. Where fully healthy children are maimed into becoming beggars. Where children become victims of religious communalism. And where the elitist classes keep them out of prosperity and development, by not being willing to change a system that disenfranchises the children of the downtrodden.

I have worked with the disenfranchised and marginalized for most of my life. I’m a citizen of India who is proud of my country’s progress in recent years, yet I must point out the obvious again.

‘Poverty porn’

Slumdog Millionaire is not about selling the poverty of India, as a British newspaper alleged (‘Shocked by Slumdog’s poverty porn,’ Alice Miles, The Times, January 14).

Instead, it is a story about the real India of the majority, where children become the primary victims of all that is dysfunctional in society (as The Guardian pointed out).

As the movie is released across India, expect another barrage of attacks by a section of the elitist Indian media. Likely there will be heavy emphasis on the simple fact that this is a movie made by a white Brit!

Fantasized Bollywood

Such critiques forget that this movie – which was won a number of Golden Globes and Oscars – is far truer to Indian reality than the popular fantasized Bollywood movies.

But isn’t this the time for truth-telling about what ails India and our world?

Are not the children of our day the primary victims of caste and racial discrimination, human trafficking, war, poverty and religious extremism?

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The world has some 1.2 billion children – with India and China accounting for more than a fourth: 400 million children.

The vast majority of India’s roughly 250 million children are affected by dire poverty, caste discrimination and exploitation.

Slumdog children

Millions of children living in Africa, Latin America and the Muslim world suffer the same plight. Many of these are in similarly desperate situations.

Is it crystal clear to you, as it is to me? The slumdog of our generation is the boy or girl less than 14 years old.

I have a sobering, reoccurring thought these days. Is the main sin of our generation what we are doing to children – both born and unborn? What is our part in changing the conditions of the slumdog kids of the world?

Joseph D’souza is head of the Dalit Freedom Network. He was a keynote speaker at Missions Fest 2009 in Vancouver.

March 2009