<p>"
MUMBAI, India - The two main child actors from “Slumdog Millionaire” are to receive new homes from the Indian authorities after the small-budget movie swept the Oscars, winning eight Academy Awards.</p>
<p>The Mumbai homes will go to Rubina Ali and Azharuddin Ismail, who played the young roles of the movie’s central characters, Latika and Salim, in the rags-to-riches romance about a poor Indian boy competing for love and money on a TV game show.</p>
<p>“These two children have brought laurels to the country, and we have been told that they live in slums, which cannot even be classified as housing,” said Gautam Chatterjee, head of the state-run Maharashtra Housing and Area Development Authority…"</p>
<p>For children who live in slums, they certainly are very fluent with their English. It is a shame that this is happening simply because they were chosen to be in a film that won academy awards.
Loved the movie , but it really opened my eyes to the filth that so many people live in there.</p>
<p>I was reading an article the other day where there are plans for those slums to be redeveloped. The financing will come from private companies and in exchange for providing a tiny apartment for the main family that lives in a structure the private company will be given x amount of land to develop. A clever concept and sounds like a grant plan. Unfortunately tens of thousands of people will not qualify for the rehousing - if they are not the main rent payer (for instance many people rent out their upper floors to others) or if they moved there after a certain date. Those that do not qualify will move to other slums.</p>
<p>Actually, I did hear – please don’t ask me where – that the producers of Slumdog Millionaire donated $1 million to the slums so a school can be built. I think that’s terrific. It’s just that there are so many people who need so much that it’s hard for one action to really make a big difference.</p>
<p>I do think the Gates Foundation is trying to go about it right, by trying to solve root causes of poverty and illness.</p>
<p>It’s the children who played the characters at younger ages that are being discussed here. Those children speak no English, which is why large portions of the movie were subtitled.</p>
<p>Fendrock, I believe the two from the slum are the ones who played Latika and Salim. Young Jamal was played by a middle class kid, as were the in-between age kids.</p>
<p>that is odd…I some of them being interviewed the other night on one og the post-Oscar shows and they were speaking English to the interviewer…I thought they were the youngest children , but maybe not</p>
<p>first of all…
it was gr8 for the british director to use kids from slums rather than kids from well-2-do families…i think he wanted his film to be real…
thats what indian directors usually do…pick kids from privileged backgrounds. (most of them with connections to director , producer etc. )
i live in india…in my state (kerala) ,slums are less than 1%…its a good ratio comparing with 20% (minimum) to 50% in other states of India…this low ratio was mainly possible due to the work of both communists and christian missionaries in our state. (yep…an unholy combination …it also helped us (my state) to achieve 100% literacy and life expectancy of over 73 years …indian average is 56 years…
india has enough money to do like this in other states…but since most of the poor are backward castes,they dont really care…</p>
…it also helped us (my state) to achieve 100% literacy and life expectancy of over 73 years …indian average is 56 years…