Letter from an Economist – 19th January 2009.
Earlier this week I was in Cambridge and decided to go to the cinema. My choice was Slum Dog Millionaire and I have been in a state of some confusion since I sat and watched a fast, hard hitting and sometimes quite distressing account of life in modern Mumbai.
The film is not cows or cobras, or exotic traditional weddings. It might just be the first world traveller film about India and it certainly has discarded the old, smudged lenses approach to films about the vast sub-continent that is India. No more misty mornings as the faithful flock to the Ganges or labourers engaged in back breaking toil in fields as temperatures reach 120 degrees Fahrenheit.
Within hours of my leaving the cinema I heard that the film had been nominated for awards and that it was being marketing as the first ‘feel-good’ movie of the post credit crunch era!
I feel that the film’s freshness lies not in how we, the ‘west’, view India but in how Indians now interpret their own country and its growing problems associated with the sudden wealth that has involved, as yet, just a small minority of the population. It is perhaps that acceptance that many young Indians now want a ‘rags to riches’ opportunity which is the theme that has engaged the US market, especially as their land of opportunity is now experiencing hard times. Maybe Gatsby and his fantasy of self invention is easier to accept when it is played against a background that obviouslyis not America? Indeed, the excesses of the free-market system are now clear for all Americans to see and many have witnessed erosions in the wealth and job security that was till now the tales of grandparents and the Great Depression. So terrifying have been the problems caused by the collapse of confidence in the capitalist system that Presidents, lawyers, investment bankers and others have all expressed doubts as to its sustainability and most now want much closer regulation of what were until recently relatively ‘free markets’.
The film’s director, Danny Boyle, is well known for his use of ‘reality’ in his film-making and he certainly introduces those who see India as a land of temples, religious men sitting crossed legged and contemplating etc to the reality of over a billion people trying to live above a level of poverty that is upsetting to watch. Police openly beat suspects, teachers hurl books at pupils and all around are small children crawlingthrough their slum dwellings amongst human waste, disease, prostitution and religious hatred.
In the world of Malik, the film’s star, the world just ‘happens’ and you have to accept it. For most the burdens are so overpowering that they sink without trace, die early and seldom see anything of the life style that we enjoy in the ‘west’ and which a small minority now have access to in a land where the gap between those for whom the market has been kind and those for whom it has been cruel is vast. Once one has watched this film you can appreciate why all the armed men of the November 2008 attacks on hotels and other prominent building in Mumbai were Muslims. Put bluntly, the Muslims of Mumbai see themselves as second class citizens and know that the money of this new, fast moving society is mostly Hindu bound.
Malik faces all the problems that such a world can throw at him and yet he both survives and earns our respect. Seldom does he stoop to the levels of say his brother and yet he builds a life for himself and with a display of virtues that are seldom evident in my world he encounters temptation and shows clear abilities to treat all people the same, regardless of material wealth, respects authority but only when he feels they deserve it and somehow manages to evade all the traps such dubious characters as the game host put before him. I suppose he represents what India needs and that is someone prepared to be themselves. Malik faces all the familiar barriers to social mobility that India has long represented. The caste system, family expectations, fatalism, hideous bureaucracy and rises above these to show a glimpse of what might be possible. Again, one wonders if it is this post greed vision that so enthrals America.
But then one has to accept that within these changes are new problems. Who are these early middle-aged women working all night in hot and sticky call centres? Will India survive and keep within it all the majesty that many see in it when a philosophy of ‘destiny’ is now twinned with ‘bend the rules and add just a little value and spice’ to your existence.
The main visual focus of part of the film is a set of ‘Who wants to be a millionaire’ and with it the dream of one life changing moment. The gaze of those wanting celebrity is as obvious as any audition list for Big Brother!America was founded on such dreams, be it against religious persecution or other hideous problems associated with life in Eastern Europe, Ireland or the southern Mediterranean the immigrant worked hard, expelled the locals and for those who succeeded it was the result of their own efforts. They based their creed on hard work, the gun and very little interference from government. However, as they watch others take on the mantle of the new entrepreneurs I wonder if some American will just ponder on what happened over the last year and how they feel about bail-outs’ and a growing need to accept government, which is their tax paying dollars, helping them? Why did the few get rich and forget that their behaviour would ultimately impact on the wider community? As America re-examines itself in 2009 India seems set on trying to emulate most of what the US is now less sure is the best way forward. Even some scientists are now saying that success is social and that certain cultures breed success, that genes influence skills and that there may be good times to be born!
In the coming days a candidate who is obviously self made will become the next President of the United States of America and yet he made little of his climb out of poverty. His programme appears to include the biggest role for government since the depression. In India, the self is now emerging as a way to enrich the individual in more ways than material well-being. In a strange paradox the US is re-considering that too much was left to the self at just the time India and the ‘new wave’ of emerging countries are appearing to believe that too little has been made of the power of the self to drive prosperity. But will it be focused on just a few or will lessons have been learnt from all the troubles inherent in the ‘American way of life?’