Does the Oscar Award-winning film "Slumdog Millionaire," tell the truth about child poverty in India? Thomas Chandy, CEO of Save the Children in India, answers the question in an e-mail exchange with National Geographic's Marc Silver in February.

 

Q. Save the Children is active in Delhi, the nation's capital. How many children live in poverty in that city?

A. It's hard to have a precise figure but thousands of children live in slums that lack the most basic of amenities such as drainage, water supply, sanitation. And there is no infrastructure worth the name. After Slumdog Millionaire there has been much talk in the Western media about the life of children living in slums in Mumbai but one cannot ignore the reality elsewhere in the country: Millions of children across towns and cities in India have no access to education and health care and live in deplorable conditions in slums.

Q. What resources are there to help these slum children?

A. Save the Children works with local partner organizations in New Delhi, Calcutta, and Hyderabad to help slum children get education and training in vocational skills. It also helps reunite children who have been trafficked with their families.

Q. What do you mean by "trafficked"?

A. Trafficking quite simply is the modern equivalent of slavery. The U.N. definition of human trafficking is: "The recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of persons, by means of threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, abduction, fraud, deception or the abuse of power or the giving or receiving of payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person for the purpose of exploitation."

For example, parents in dire financial straits sometimes allow their children to be taken by unscrupulous men to cities in the belief that a better life is in store for them. They do not realize that their children are worse off in the cities as they are forced to work as child domestic workers or beg. In such cases, the parents receive a pittance for allowing their children to be taken away for a "better life." Sometimes, after a natural emergency (for example, the floods in Bihar in August) children are separated from their parents and end up with people who then exploit them for work.

Q. Does the movie depiction of an unscrupulous man who takes in orphans and forces them to beg have any relation to the reality in Mumbai today? If not, does it reflect the ways things used to be?

A. The movie does not stretch reality when it speaks of child trafficking. Indeed, children are trafficked by people who force them into begging. The United Nations Development Programme's Delhi Human Development Report '06 states that in Delhi, a large number of children work as domestic servants, in roadside hotels (dhabas), in shops, etc. The report further notes that many of these children are migrants with or without families, often forcibly brought to Delhi, and that there are reports of them being exploited and abused. It points out that street children are the most vulnerable, having no rights and no protection from exploiters. They find it difficult to access any government agency except a few nongovernmental organizations [NGOs] for help.

Q. In the movie, a child is blinded so he will be a more effective beggar. Is that a practice that has ever taken place in Mumbai or in other cities in India?

A. There have been media reports that children are maimed or blinded to make them more "effective" as beggars but there is no concrete study on this. On the other hand, it is also true that children who beg at traffic signals and elsewhere also simulate a handicap!

Q. For Save the Children, what are the biggest problems in working with children who are exploited or trafficked?

A. There is no concrete data on the exact number of street children who are vulnerable to abuse, exploitation or neglect. This is a key concern and challenge for Save the Children. Also, more importantly, there is no comprehensive child protection system to protect or prevent exploitation and abuse of street children.

Q.Will Slumdog Millionaire have an impact?

A. It's great that the movie talks about poverty, it's great that the movie is about hope. But let's move the debate beyond this: The reality is millions of children are working when they should be at school. Can we move beyond talking and do something to change this reality?