The Real Slumdog Millionaires

I recently saw Slumdog Millionaire.

It brings to light the terrible, horrible conditions for India’s child beggars.

Take Mumbai – formerly Bombay when under the rule of the British empire – a chaotic urban sprawl that is now India’s largest city and home to more than 20 million people. More than nine million of them live in slums, raising families in shacks built from rubbish on top of open sewers. It is a terrifying place to be, and I have been to Detroit.



Mafia gangs drug children take them to the hospital and have their arms or legs amputated. Why? So they will be more sympathetic while begging. Think about it: organized gangs of adults kidnap and intentionally cripple poor children and then put them back on the street begging. Of course, the gangs then take all of the money the children earn.



So just who would chop off the leg of a healthy child? The boys are victims of India’s so-called ‘beggar mafia’ — criminals so violent and amoral that they are prepared to hack the limbs off children, as well as steal new-born babies from hospitals.



They use the children as begging ‘props’ to maximize their earnings from sympathetic passers-by. The plight of India’s child beggars has been thrust into the international spotlight by Slumdog Millionaire.



Their suffering comes down to one thing: money. Goddamn money.



In a country of 1.2 billion people, where the gulf between rich and poor is vast, there are an estimated 300,000 child beggars. Perhaps unsurprisingly, almost all of these child beggars, whether mutilated or not, are addicted to solvents, alcohol and charras (a powerful Afghan hashish, often laced with opium), which are supplied by the gang masters to keep the children docile and obedient.



The shocking truth about the beggar mafia emerged last year. In what was dubbed the ‘arms for alms’ scandal, doctors were filmed by Indian journalists agreeing to cut off the healthy limbs of children for just $200. The maiming of children is now so widespread that even devoutly religious locals refuse to give disabled children money, knowing that it is passed straight to their ‘handlers’ and that they are the pawns of a growing organized crime syndicate.



In my travels to India, when I was approached by beggars – several times a day; if you go there, count on it – I never gave them money. I would offer them food, which they don’t want. I know that may sound harsh, but I quickly found that there is little room for emotion. This is a business — a mafia. These children are taught how to look as pitiful as possible to get money — and what they earn just gets taken from them.



Despite India’s economic boom, the future looks bleak for millions of the nation’s children. They never really get old, they just get replaced with new ones — and cast out on to the street to become beggars or die. That’s the way life is in India. It never changes.