Share this story!            

Rich kids slum it in new Indian reality show

Trading their Blackberries for scrubbing brushes and their mansions for huts, a group of wealthy youth are gluing Indians to their TV screens in a country struggling to bridge the gap between poverty and prosperity.
Sunny Sara, 28, a nightclub owner in Mumbai, was one of the participants in a new and popular reality TV show called ‘The Big Switch’ which involves rich contestants residing in a slum for one month to help slum dwellers. The show went on air late last month, almost a year after Danny Boyle’s Oscar-winning film ‘Slumdog Millionaire’ showed the world what it was like to be poor in Mumbai. The show involves 10 rich contestants paired with 10 slum dwellers. The groups have to work on tasks such as shining shoes at railway stations and selling wares at traffic signals, jobs the poor often have to do.
Points are given for each task and the onus is on the rich contestants to win the cash prize of 1 million rupees which would go towards fulfilling the dreams of their partner. The show, which ends in the last week of January, was shot in a slum in Mumbai’s suburbs where fishermen live, and contestants, who also included an actor and a former Miss India, had to live in a one-room hut with their partner. Sara’s partner on the show is Abhishek Kushwah, a 22-year-old who grew up in Dharavi, Asia’s biggest slum. reuters life

Home | Infotainment

Share this story!