Slumdog Millionaire’s producers have announced that through the Jai Ho Trust set up to finance the child actors’ housing and education, a social worker will be hired to oversee weekly, perhaps daily monitoring of the children’s welfare. Although Rubina Ali’s father Rafiq still denies that he tried to sell his daughter, the Indian authorities have arrested him and are investigating the entire situation. Rubina’s mother was the one to report Rafiq, and she and Rafiq’s new wife (Rubina’s step-mother) got into a physical confrontation on Monday, as the news broke internationally. TMZ has footage of the fight.
The Jai Ho Trust has already been set up in India, with what I suspect are Indian trustees who can monitor the children’s welfare regularly. Hiring a social worker is a good idea, and one of Slumdog’s producer’s has issued a statement saying that he hopes the trust can work with the families for the children’s best interests.
After news broke that the father of Slumdog Millionaire star Rubina Ali reportedly offered to sell his 9-year-old daughter for nearly $300,000, the film’s producers told Usmagazine.com that they have hired a social worker to look after her.
Rubina’s dad, Rafiq Qureshi, denies these claims but has reportedly admitted to being broke. Although he said he was left with “nothing” from the Oscar-winning flick, the Jai Ho Trust was established with financial support from the filmmakers to ensure the welfare of the movie’s child stars, including Rubina and Azharuddin Mohammed Ismail.
“Both Danny [Boyle, the director] and I remain committed to working the trust and the family to secure Rubina’s long-term best interests,” Slumdog producer Christian Colson told Us in a statement Tuesday.
One of the Jai Ho trustees, Noshir H. Dadrawala, said that “the trust will support Rubina, her parents and responsible authorities to ensure that the rights and best interests of Rubina” are protected.
“The trust is in regular contact with Rubina Ali and her family and has hired a social worker to assist in looking after her welfare and that of her co-star,” Dadrawala said in a statement.
In addition to providing a trained social worker hired by Jai Ho Trust to periodically counsel the children and the family, the independent trust is also set up to ensure that the family of the child star receives suitable accommodations and a fixed sum of money each month for living expenses. It also covers the education costs for Rubina and her siblings and provides her with a lump sum of money after she turns 18 years old.
“Danny and I both fully support Mr. Dadrawala’s comments,” Colson told Us.
On Monday, after reporters posed as a wealthy Middle Eastern family interested in buying a girl, Britain’s News of the World reported that Rubina was originally being sold for $75,000, but her father raised the price after the success of Slumdog.
[From US Magazine]
What is left to say about this? It’s a sad commentary on celebrity, parental responsibility, success, poverty, and much, much more. I don’t think the Jai Trust is going to guarantee that Rubina grows up an emotionally and physically healthy young woman, but it will help a lot. It shouldn’t be Danny Boyle’s or the trustees’ responsibility to act “en loco parentis” (in place of a parent) for the welfare of these children, but that’s looking like the best possible option at this point.
Here are Rubina Ali and Azzharruddin Ismail walking the catwalk for the Ashima Leena fashion show during Indian fashion week in New Delhi on March 19th. Images thanks to Fame Pictures .
This whole situation is incredibly painful to read about. I generally try to not hold another cultures practices against them, simply for the fact that it may be understandably difficult to understand the reasoning behind certain behaviors, if you’ve not been raised w/ them your entire life. I am more then happy to accept that being raised in any particular culture your entire life is obviously going to affect what you dictate is right, or wrong (amongst other things). Obviously there are more then a few actions that don’t necessarily fall into my happily accepting it as a different point of view (beating a woman for leaving her home, intolerant blind unprovoked hatred, female circumcision, hell even male circumcision, and that’s just the tip of the iceberg, no pun intended, but I digress)
The instance of trying to sell family members, and please note I’m saying sell, not give up for adoption if you are totally incapable of raising the child, is absolutely despicable, and sadly this isn’t the first time I’ve ever heard about this. So maybe I’m taking this to a personal level…
My mothers, god-daughters father (sorry that’s a bit wordy huh)is a Muslim Indian,(again that particular fact has nothing to due w/ my anger toward him whatsoever, I could care less what his race and religion are, I merely am stating this due to the high similarity to this particular case), and since he wasn’t married to the mother he’s decided she is a bastard and not worthy of his time (he picks and chooses his sins, he smokes, and screws, but won’t eat pork, or accept his daughter). He has threatened on numerous occasions to take her back to India and sell her, amongst other vile actions, threats, vandalism and whatnot. Thankfully law got involved, but the whole situation in general is so unbelievably disturbing. I don’t know, maybe I just don’t get it, but in situations like this I don’t really think I want to get it.
It’s upsetting that more can’t be done to protect those kids. I’m sure the whole thing shouldn’t bother me in such the extreme way that it does… but it does. Sorry that was a long rant, and I’m sure parts don’t make sense. I’m thinking I needed to get it off my chest.
Selling one’s children or offering them for marriage (a 9 year old to a 60 year old, for example) to pay one’s debt is a bordering-on-common practice in India, Pakistan and Afghanistan. In the marriage scenario, if she’s too young to have sex, she becomes a household servant until she becomes “of age.” The parents rarely make this decision out of greed, but rather desperation. In the case of debt, often their whole family’s lives have been threatened. This happens all the time so perhaps the good thing to come out of this situation is that because of Rubina’s fame, it’s shining a spotlight on the practice.
Danny Boyle should have hired social workers for the child actors from the beginning. Now he’s trying to backtrack? Why? He’s already shown his true colors. What a disgusting louse.
I’ve tried to avoid these “Slumdog” post as much as possible – it hurts my heart to see these kids at the epicenter of a culture clash.
At the same time, these stories bring the issue of 3rd world poverty front and center. Rafiq isn’t the first man to attempt to sell his daughter into sexual slavery, and he won’t be the last. The number of people (mostly women and children) sold into “human sex trafficking” is staggering – and it’s given far too little attention in the American media.
Carrie – you’re absolutely right. Rarely does a family “want” to sell a child into the sex trade industry, but all too often, a girl is just seen as another mouth to feed. It frustrates me to tears to see the way females are treated in “up and coming” third world countries. If they aren’t a vessel for babies, they are absolutely worthless.
I don’t agree with what the father has done by no means so please don’t misinterpret my comment here…
Why is this the responsibility of the film makers for setting up a trust, buying homes, and now getting social workers? I know that the situation in India isn’t ideal and the movie did give a pretty honest depiction of life in the slums but she got paid for the work she did on scale in India, something like $1400 her dad says he makes a couple of bucks a week so on those standards she got paid a lot. So why now is it still up to the people who made the movie to watch after them?
If that was the case why would child actors in any country have such a hard time adjusting to life as an adult… No one set up trusts for any child star when they were kids or got them social workers here in this country. I just don’t get it.
If i’m being totally ignorant then please explain to me what it is i am not understanding.
Jaundice,
you seem like you would curse Donny Boyle even if it rained in India and Rubina got her shoes wet.
In other words, Damned if he does and damned if he doesn’t.
So now, after he paid the kids for their work, set up trust funds for them, procured apartments for them to live in, giving them the means of an education, sends a social worker over there to look after the kids, etc.
it still isn’t good enough for anyone. WHAT THE FUCK!!??!? seriously, will everyone finally be happy when he adopts the kids himself and bring them to America? that way they are out of harms way and everything is hunky-dory? And they would stop making international headlines across the globe bringing to light the plight of millons of kids left behind? Would that finally then please everyone? Or it wont be good enough because he is being so selfish and not rescuing all the other poor children in India?
jennifurr (and everyone else)… i think this is where i completely disagree with the posters on this board… the children did NOT get adequately compensated for a scale in india… just because they have a lot of poor doesn’t mean that indians cannot be millionaires just like the rest of the world… which they are…
$1400???? you seriously think that’s enough? this issue is just one of the few things on this board that REALLY REALLY gets under my skin… if these kids were american, in a movie with the same level amount of acting, same contribution to the final product and same box office income, they would be RICH…FILTHY RICH!!! some lawyer would have sued the pants, shirt, shorts, panties and whatever else off of danny boyle…
and i hope that’s what happenes… i hope anyone who thinks that $1400 is enough payment for their contribution to a gazillion dollar grossing film is forced to work without salary and be given excuses… and i hope danny boyle and co. get sued silly…
Carrie: Yea I was vaguely aware of that scenario, I’ve read about it before. I hope I didn’t come off as hateful, or ignorant in my above rant, as it was more just a rant of built up emotion over the past couple years regarding a semi similar situation. This story had just been reminding me of it all over the past couple days.
Except the person involved in the situation I was talking about is neither in need, or in danger of anything, he lives in the U.S, and is just a disgusting excuse for a human being, who threatened to abduct his daughter from the U.S and bring her to India to sell/trade/I don’t even want to know. Again I apologize if I came off offensive in anyway, as it was truly not my intention whatsoever.
Liz: I don’t think you were hateful, you were expressing outrage at a horrible situation and a specific one for you and I was offering some more perspective on the more general practice of selling children.
At the risk of diverting this discussion into other areas, I want to mention that children are not always sold to be sex slaves, they are also just sold to desperate parents in the US and elsewhere who just want a child (or to celebrities wanting another accessory). Their parent(s) in poverty may have no other choice and often make that choice in agony. So I think this story highlights several major issues that need immediate action from the international community: 1) child sex trafficking, 2) international adoption regulations 3) abject poverty around the world contributing to abuse.
On a less serious note prompted by Jennifurr: Don’t you wish someone had hired a social worker for Lohan or Spears when they were kids? But then what would the tabloids do!
Couldn’t Madonna set up a trust, social worker, education, house, etc for Mercy and her relatives?
good idea about a social worker. not danny boyle’s obligation or responsibility but a responsible gesture. they got paid what child actors in low budget movies get paid all around the world when local actors are used, so their compensation was on its face fair and only became an issue after the film’s success. judging this by american actor standards is not contextualized and a specious argument that they would be “rich rich rich.”
im so sick of this stupid story. should hiring a couple of kids become a freaking international incident? a thousand movies have been made with local talent and never has it been this much of an international media storm. this says much more about the ground conditions in india, their media machines, political machinations and cultural practices than it does about the producers of this movie. scape goating the producers and director at the expense of looking at the conditions in india that made all of this possible. ridiculous.
bros: i think you said what i was trying to more eloquently… i just don’t think it’s the responsibility of the film makers to watch over these kids for their entire life.
christinat: i think that the money paid for the actors was agreed upon by all parties prior to the shooting of the film, otherwise they wouldn’t have done it. if you translate the value of their money to ours it’s still a very reasonable rate.
If they wanted percentages of the gross of the film that would’ve needed to be put into their contracts… not after the fact.
There are great examples of child actors not being a britney or lohan such as natalie portman. people make their own lives and have to live by those choices made.
I am posting in response to the pictures of these two children.
If I could just make a collage out of them it would express the severe irony of their lives: One minute they’re all dressed up for the Oscars or a fashion show, the next they’re sleeping in the streets. It’s just so disgusting what they do to the two of them. They are like dolls to be dressed up and displayed to the whole world then once their owners are done they just get discarded back into their dirty toy bin.