Posted on 01/24/2009 5:48:18 PM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
Chennai: 'Slumdog Millionaire' has a fan in Home Minister P Chidambaram, who said on Saturday that its theme should inspire banks to provide loans to budding entrepreneurs from slums which are humming with business ideas.
Chidamabaram cited the movie portraying the rags to riches story of a boy from Mumbai slum as an example to show that young boys and girls from slums are not lagging behind corporate India.
"Please watch the movie after its release," he said speaking at the launch of the International Financial Corporation-Venture East-Bharatiya Yuva Shakti Trust (an NGO)-sponsored fund to promote grassroots entrepreneurship in India.
The movie has fetched the Golden Globe award for musician A R Rahman and won ten Oscar nominations.
Recalling the success story of girl at a slum in Delhi who had set up a beauty saloon with a Government loan, he said "today, most of the residents in that slum are her clients and she earns Rs 5000 a month"
"A slum like Dharavi in Mumbai is humming with business ideas and innovations and we have to reach to such people also," he said and exhorted government and private lending organisations to help such people.
Besides, formal education was "not necessarily" the yardstick to measure success but was "a great boon and help," he said, citing the case of such people.
"Lot of young men and women in slums have the necessary qualities of being innovative and are willing to take risk to carry out a business venture," he said.
An excellent movie. I highly recommend it. The micro-loans idea is also, IMO, a very good idea that has been shown to be successful.
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