The Slumdog Millionaire is a novel that is extremely close to reality Essay

The Slumdog Millionaire is a novel that is extremely close to reality as it represents many aspects of the real Indian society w - Essay Example No one could have imagined that this poor waiter would actually be able to correctly answer all the questions on the show and become the rightful winner of the amount of one billion. Ram answers all the twelve questions and this comes as a surprise to the producers of the show as Ram comes from an uneducated and underprivileged class with no access to materials that could provide him with such skills to answer these knowledgeable questions. The producers of the show are shocked and they are unwilling to accept this surprise owing to the unavailability of money. They resort to wrong means and hand over Ram to the police claiming that he has cheated and won the show. A lawyer comes to the rescue of Ram and helps proving the fact that Ram had not opted for wrong means to win the show. It is to the lawyer that Ram narrates the story of his life and the happenings in the slums where he lived. He told her of how he gained the knowledge to answer the questions that were put up in the show ( Swarup 2008). The author utilizes the occurrences of the life of Ram to present a very close picture to the readers of the Indian society. The novel is a shadow of the happenings and injustices that prevail in India. The novel is close to reality and explains the high poverty levels that persist in the country along with child abuse and beggary that is still a part of the Indian society. ... He explains the life in the slum in the following words when he is being arrested and taken by the police, â€Å"My departure from Asia’s biggest slum would make no difference to their lives. There would be the same queue for water in the morning, the same daily struggle to make it to the seven-thirty local in time.† His words are very true to reality as this slum has been marked to be an area which has stayed at its place for about 4 decades. The slum is home to 6.5 million people who live in a ratio of approximately 18000 people per acre. This indicates the cramming and lack of space for the people to live. The area does not have proper provision of electricity and it also lacks proper water supply. Slumdog Millionaire tries to indicate these conditions of despair that still persist in India in an era of the twenty first century when man has moved ahead to acquire technological breakthroughs that were beyond human consideration. It has been seen that there has been a great surge in the people residing in slums from the period of 1981 to 2001 in India. The number of people in slums has increased from 27.9 million to 61.8 million. This clearly highlights the rising poverty in the country and the novel presents this with the accounts provided by Ram about his life in the slum (Jacobson 2007; Page 2007; Vikas 2008). Child abuse and abduction of children is also a major issue in India. Children are kidnapped by beggar mafias that persist in India and work in an organized fashion to keep their business working. Ram presents with his account of falling into the hands of these abductors who try to force him into this profession. He explains the brutalities that