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John Millen

Starring: Dev Patel and Freida Pinto
Director: Danny Boyle
Year of original release: 2008
Genre: Comedy/drama/musical
Set-up
 Slumdog Millionaire won eight out of the 10 Oscar categories - including Best Picture and Best Director -  at the 2009 Academy Awards. The low-budget British film had been greeted with critical acclaim when it was released the year before. 
It also became a runaway hit at the box office in East Asia. The movie grossed more than US$2 million on its opening weekend in China and made more than US$12 million in total in Japan. Following its success at the Oscars, Slumdog rocketed to the top of box offices in 34 countries. 
The movie was marketed worldwide as 'the feel-good film of the decade', but its success was also due to strong word-of-mouth responses from audiences. 
Director Danny Boyle has since set up an education fund for street children in the slums of Mumbai, where he had picked several  to act in the film.
Plot
 Jamal (right) is a teenager from the slums of Mumbai who becomes a contestant on the Indian version of the TV game show Who Wants to be a Millionaire? Against all odds, Jamal wins round after round and is arrested  on suspicion of cheating. During interrogation, Jamal begins to recount his life, explaining how events in his life have led him to know the answers to all the questions on the show.
Life in the slums
 As travellers arrive at Mumbai airport, they are greeted with the sight of more than 80,000 slum dwellings scattered around the runway and terminal buildings. Yet despite the appalling conditions in them, slums are often happy places where people live and work together. The crime rate is surprisingly low and many slum children show an earnest work ethic often missing in richer parts of the city.
Still, slums are slums and they are not only an eyesore and a health hazard but also a blight on Mumbai's reputation.
The slums of Mumbai
 Mumbai is India's richest city, but it also has some of the country's worst slums. It is a sprawling city that covers a vast area from upscale Juhu Beach  with millionaires' mansions to  dismal shantytowns. 
Slums occupy some 60 per cent of the crowded city and are home to more than half of the city's millions of inhabitants. As Mumbai's wealth draws more  poor people from the countryside in search of jobs, the slums keep growing. 
The current policy to relocate squatters and slum dwellers into concrete housing blocks has made little progress as many poor people prefer the community of the slums.
India's street children
 Indian cities are home to the world's largest population of street children - an estimated 18 million.  India boasts one of the globe's fastest-growing economies, but this has also widened the gap between the rich and the poor.  India has millions of child workers.
Mumbai's slums are home to both locally born and migrant children. Most slum children end up begging on the streets or rummaging though the city's rubbish piles for things to sell. They are often badly fed, sickly and exploited. Many have been orphaned or  abandoned by their parents. Some choose to live on the streets to get away from bad treatment at home or because their parents cannot afford to care for them. 
 Street children are a part of life in India. They will remain so for a long time despite social and political programmes to educate them and improve their lives.
The cough scandal
 In 2002, Who Wants to be a Millionaire? was at the centre of a court case in Britain  as exciting as the show itself. Charles Ingram (right), a contestant on the original British show, had come up with a simple system to receive the answers from his wife and a friend seated in the audience. Ingram managed to win the grand prize. 
Yet during and after the recording sessions of his two appearances, production staff became suspicious. Microphones had picked up 19 coughs from the same two members of the audience each time Ingram repeated his answers to questions from the quizmaster. It was shown that when Ingram repeated the four possible answers to each question, either his wife or the friend coughed at the correct one to help the contestant. The three cheaters were convicted of deception and fraud.




Slumdog Millionaire