Travel companies are following the success of 'Slumdog Millionaire' by promoting slum experience tours in Mumbai and Calcutta – but can this help the locals or is it a case of voyeuristic 'poorism', asks BRIAN O'CONNELL

THE SUCCESS OF Danny Boyle's Slumdog Millionairethrew light on the experiences of children in India – while also attracting accusations that it made light of the issues associated with child poverty. The film's child stars have been under scrutiny since, with one of them, Rubina Ali, due to release an autobiography next month. And the question many NGOs and humanitarian workers are asking is whether it is okay to manufacture popcorn optimism out of real life despair?

Boyle’s Oscar-winning film, with its happy ending, has already spawned a host of travel tours to the slums of Mumbai and Calcutta. Operators, such as Reality Tours, are actively promoting slum experiences through online sites, offering visitors a chance to catch a glimpse of the young Slumdog stars in their natural environment or to walk the odour-filled slum streets. A percentage of the admission price goes to local charities, and some operators outlaw photographs and restrict the numbers allowed on an individual tour.

It's too early to tell whether this type of travel experience is evidence of a more socially conscious tourist or simply part of a wider move to voyeuristic "poorism". Undoubtedly, since the success of Slumdog Millionaire, poverty tourism is alive and well in parts of India and doing a brisk trade.

Indians themselves have yet to make up their minds. Many say they enjoyed the film, but that they have very little in common with the reality of Indian slum life. Some NGOs on the ground reported a huge increase in the volume of calls to their offices from tourists and travel operators looking to visit slum projects or get information on the “worst places to go to”. Tabloid news reports on the child stars of Slumdog Millionaire and their family woes do little to help throw the right kind of spotlight on the problem in India. Many feel that reports that the children were being exploited by their families only serves to reinforce negative stereotypes.

MEANWHILE, THE actual experience of many children in India is lost. In a country where 800 million out of the 1.2 billion population lives below the poverty line, many children spend their early years in cramped mud huts and shacks, in illegal factories and on exposed street corners. The reality of life for millions of children in India is one of hardship and despair, with few happy endings.

In an area of Calcutta called Shalimar Yard, a former government building has been partially taken over by Irish NGO The Hope Foundation and is now used to educate both children and parents alike. The 50 children here will receive primary education and have all been rescued from a life of labour and poverty. Were they not in the classroom, they would be in jobs collecting cement with their brothers and sisters for 50 rupees (€0.75) a day.

“We know about the film and know that the same things happen in our communities also. There is big crime here,” says their teacher. The government has cut off the electricity supply to the building, which means the children are educated, without fans, in sweltering heat. In the evenings, the parents are taught about the importance of education and allowing children have a childhood.

Yet, these 50 children are the lucky ones. Nearby, in one of the unregistered slum areas, the children who have no access to education are returning from a day’s grind, covered in grit and cement dust. The first girl we meet, Rakzana, is seven years old, and has been working for one year. Her job involves collecting 10kg cement bags, carrying them on her head for several hours a day and selling them at a nearby trading yard. She gets paid between 10 (€0.15) and 50 rupees (€0.75) a day. Her father lost both his legs in an accident, so her mother sent her to work to help feed the family. Other children we meet work as domestic servants, washing and ironing for the neighbourhood’s rising middle class.

There are also shocking scenes at Belgachi dump, where so called “rag pickers” sift through rubbish for an income. There are no machines at this dump to carry out the recycling, unlike most others in the city, so humans are left to sort by hand the 200 truckloads of rubbish that arrive every day.

The atmosphere in the area is tense, as evictions are taking place in a temporary slum that has developed near the large dumping ground. The authorities want to extend the dump, so the shacks and huts are being bulldozed to make way.

Trucks empty their contents on the main dumping ground and two dozen barefooted workers with sticks comb the mounds for recyclable materials. Humans compete with pigs, wild dogs, goats and ravens for rubbish, with several children also working the dump. Few of them will speak to us. Their parents are angry at the many NGOs and media who visit the site, believing that little is done to alleviate their plight. Up to 100 children work on the dumping ground, with the chance of infection through open sores on their feet and hands making for perilous conditions. For this work, they receive 40 rupees (€0.60) per day.

One 10-year-old boy called Kartick works six hours a day at the site, along with his mother. Another girl, Arti, who is 11 years old, sifts through rubbish as it is unloaded, and tells us she goes to school in the morning and works the dump in the afternoons. Our translator informs us later that the girl has never been to school. “She told us that because she thinks her parents will get in trouble otherwise,” he says.

Hope CEO Maureen Forrest says that her organisation has begun to try and change the situation in the dump community, where children are forced to work. She says the site is one of the worst in the city. “We brought someone here last week to help conduct an assessment survey. They said it looked like Armageddon, and they’re right.”

THE HOPE Foundation expects to begin work in this area soon, but this will involve carefully navigating social complexities if they are to succeed in breaking the child labour cycle. “We will have to work slightly different and have to give the parents some small remuneration for a short while so that they won’t make the children come to work in these dumps,” Forrest explains. “There’s no point in us taking the children out and introducing them to school unless we can help with the parents. ”

In the backstreets there are factories where children are also employed. Down narrow alleys and in tenement houses, men oversee rooms full of children. The majority live and work in the same rooms. Some are making covers for mobile phones, their fingers covered in glue. Others make bangles and jewellery, seated over hot stoves where the materials were burned and moulded.

The bosses are quick to say that none of the children employed are under 14 (that would be illegal), but in reality they range in age from six years upwards. In the jewellery factory, each child produces five decorated bangles a day, which will be sold for between 500 (€7.50) and 1000 rupees (€15) at market. The children are paid as little as 500 rupees each per month, for six days a week, and an average of seven hours a day.

In a local clinic, which is part-Irish Aid and part-Hope Foundation funded, a large queue has formed with parents taking their children to avail of vaccination services. Several of the children have infections, burns and spinal disorders, due in part to their working conditions. "I saw that film," says the doctor in attendance, referring to Slumdog Millionaire, "and I have to say, it's not the slum life I know."

See www.hopefoundation.info