As Kalpana Sharma points out, many elite Indians are deeply ignorant of the slums and their inhabitants. "They are the ones who need to see this film. Many people have no idea where their servants live. They don't know that their driver, comes from a slum every day." Certainly, I found that people who have some experience of the slums tend to be less offended by the film than those who have never entered one.

Unlike previous films by foreigners or Indians touching on sensitive subjects, Slumdog has not been banned; nor has it provoked riots. Indeed, it has done relatively well for a foreign film in India, especially given the massive availability of pirate DVDs in the weeks before it opened, the preference of Indian mass audiences for escapism, and the familiarity of a poverty that seems much less exotic and colourful when it is part of everyday life.