Indian Essay

India is the second largest country in the world.  The population is 1,173,108,018 as of July 2010.  The only country above India is China.  India has a billion more that the United States which is one below India.  It has been increasing ever since. 

Human trafficking is a major issue in India.  Trafficking means the movement of vehicles, ships, persons, etc., in an area.  In India it is very populated by men, women, and children and therefore is much trafficked.  For the fifth consecutive year India is on the Tier 2 Watch List.  The Tier 2 Watch List is a list of all the countries whose governments do not fully comply with the TVPA’s minimum standards, but are making significant efforts to bring themselves into compliance with those standards. The Tier 2 Watch List has sub categories where countries are separated into instead of being generalized.  Also, “the absolute number of victims of severe forms of trafficking is very significant or is significantly increasing; or there is a failure to provide evidence of increasing efforts to combat severe forms of trafficking in persons from the previous year; or the determination that a country is making significant efforts to bring themselves into compliance with minimum standards was based on commitments by the country to take additional future steps over the next year”.  However, India is on the Tier 2 Watch List because of its failure to provide evidence of increasing efforts to combat human trafficking in 2007.

In the movie Slumdog Millionaire, India was not portrayed accurately.  This movie only showed the slums and shantytowns of India.  Amitabh complained that Mumbai was portrayed as a third world country.  Obviously, Slumdog Millionaire only showed the slum parts of India and not the major cities.  They did it that way because the point of the movie was to show a kid from the slums knowing all the answers on a game show, called “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?”.  The idea was not to show the best parts of Mumbai, it was to show the shantytowns and the bad parts of Mumbai. 

It is incorrect when people say that Bollywood is the whole India cinema which is only part of the total Indian film industry.  Bollywood is the largest film producer in India and one of the largest centers of film production in the world.  The name Bollywood originated from the combination of the two words Hollywood and Mumbai. 

India has the largest number of child workers in the world.  Many of the children work in hazardous industries.  A Madras School of Social Work study found that among children employed as mechanics, factory and construction workers and weavers, 31 percent worked 10 to 11 hours daily and 22 percent worked 12 to 13 hours. In the unorganized sectors, children were paid piece rates, resulting in even longer hours for very low pay.  In India’s commercial capital, Mumbai (Bombay), there are thousands of small units known as “zari factories”. Boys aged 6-14 work 20 hours a day, seven days a week, kneeling at low tables sewing beads and colored threads on to vast lengths of fabric.