Slumdog Millionaire could only have been made by a westerner

Interesting article in The Guardian written by Nirpal Dhaliwal (Thursday, 15 January 2009).

It describes how blind Bollywood producers are to the reality of India

After its rapturous reception in Britain and America, knives are being sharpened for Slumdog Millionaire. Old iconic Bollywood blusterer, Amitabh Bachchan, critized the movie "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," he added. Bachchan is no doubt riled, as many other Bollwood no-talents will be, about the fact that the best film to be made about India in recent times has been made by a white man, Danny Boyle.

The bitter truth is, Slumdog Millionaire could only have been made by westerners. The talent exists in India for such movies: much of it, like the brilliant actor Irrfan Khan, contributed to this film. But Bollywood producers, fixated with making flimsy films about the lives of the middle class, will never throw their weight behind such projects. Like Bachchan, they are too blind to what India really is to deal with it. Poor Indians, like those in Slumdog, do not constitute India's "murky underbelly" as Bachchan moronically describes them. They, in fact, are the nation. Over 80% of Indians live on less than $2.50 (£1.70) a day; 40% on less than $1.25. A third of the world's poorest people are Indian, as are 40% of all malnourished children. In Mumbai alone, 2.6 million children live on the street or in slums, and 400,000 work in prostitution. But these people are absent from mainstream Bollywood cinema.

Bachchan's blinkered comments prove how hopelessly blind he and most of Bollywood are to the reality of India and how wholly incapable they are of making films that can address it.

World Water day March 22, 2009

The international observance of World Water Day is an initiative that grew out of the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) in Rio de Janeiro.

In 2009, the focus of World Water Day on March 22 will be on transboundary waters, with UNECE and UNESCO as the lead agencies.

More information is available on the official UN World Water Day website: http://www.unwater.org/worldwaterday/

They have a very interesting display of collateral materials for promoting the event (posters, banners, web buttons, t-shirts and even mobile desktop wallpapers).

http://www.unwater.org/worldwaterday/campaign.html

Teaser Poster

Official Poster

Wallpaper 1 Large Display (240 x 320)

Wallpaper 2 Large Display (240 x 320)

Wallpaper 3 Large Display (240 x 320)

Screensaver 1 All Displays

Design #1 Download Template (PDF)

Design #2 Download Template (PDF)

300 x 76


274 x 113


215 x 124

Within Water for Life IRC will focus on water, gender and poverty alleviation. Water and sanitation are critical factors to alleviate poverty and hunger, for sustainable development, for environmental integrity, and for human health.

Communities have complex priorities for the use of water for economic activity and for household use. Men and women often have different priorities and responsibilities. A gender focus is not simply about ‘involving women’. It is about recognising the roles of men and women, and ensuring that the voices of women, who are mainly responsible for household water but who also want economic activity, are acted on.

This woman from the Sironko District of Uganda is a true citizen of the 21st century – a multi-tasking manager with daily performance targets. She wakes early to fetch water, store it, distribute it and manage sanitation facilities in the home. She goes to bed long after dark, when the cooking, cleaning, laundering and other chores are done. She probably has more work than her mother, being also responsible today for domestic animals. The 21st century woman participates in community development work, and uses her ‘spare’ time for income generating activities. She lives a high-pressure executive lifestyle, lacking only the income, the status, the holidays, the help in the home, a lifestyle consultant, a retirement date and a pension. Will the action decade - Water for Life - make a real difference to her life?

Picture from Allen Wekoye, Uganda.