Dan Douglass on direct

Dan Douglass

It would be easy to classify 'Slumdog Millionaire' Director Danny Boyle and Producer Christian Colson's visit to Mumbai this week as self-publicity. But that would do them a massive disservice. In a world where inaction and disconnection are now the norm, Boyle and Colson have reached out and made a difference. The makers of 'Slumdog Millionaire' are in India to visit Azharuddin Ismail and other child actors whose families were made homeless after the authorites moved in to destroy their shanty town. Ismail now has a new home, thanks to Boyle, Colson and the Jai Ho Trust,( so named after the movie's soundtrack) which will pay for the education and living costs of both Ismail and his child co-star Rubina Ali until they turn eighteen. What's inspiring about this is that Boyle's and Colson's deeds have matched their words and intentions. Not just in the creative enterprise of the movie itself but in the follow-up to it. If only our political representatives and the world's governments were capable of making the same contract with themselves and the people they represent. Their collective lack of will has become more than a talking point. It's now a rallying point for the dispossessed and the disaffected, for NGO's and pressure groups, for minor celebrities and campaigners. Amnesty International today urges governments to set a 'new global deal' on human rights which must reject a 'pick and choose' approach. They cite a human toll of conflict from the DRC to Sri Lanka 'and the lukewarm response of the international community'. In addition to Amnesty's global push, this year expect NGO's to re-double their efforts to force governments to deliver on their Millennium Development Goal promises which are looking more empty as the clock ticks down. At Gleneagles in 2000, the G8 promised to cut the mortality rate of under-5's by two thirds before 2015. In parts of sub-Saharan Africa, the figure stands at a woeful 15%. Across Africa, progress is glacial. And that's shameful. At this time, those agency planners and creatives who work with developing world charities will be all too familiar with the dilemma we face as communicators, both in the fundraising and advocacy arenas. How do we stimulate real action? How do we break this cycle of inertia and indifference in a meaningful way that prompts real seismic change? Is it the sudden, shrill, disruptive alarm call that will wake governments out of their slumber ? Or a gentle whisper in the ear, something altogether more cajoling and persuasive? How do we get them to do a Boyle and Colson and engage with the issue of needless child deaths on a macro scale in the same way these guys have engaged with these two slum kids in Mumbai? An appeal to emotion isn't enough. It simply washes over a NIMBY populace and its political representatives. Is there a solution? Well, there may be. And it may lie in philosophy - and the empirical rational argument of an Australian philosopher called Peter Singer, set out in his new book 'The Life you can save'. In a nutshell, this is it. To quote "If it is in our power to prevent something very bad from happening, without thereby sacrificing anything morally significant, we ought, morally to do it'. The example he gives is pitch perfect. "If I am walking past a shallow pond and see a child drowning in it, I ought to wade in and pull the child out. This will mean getting my clothes muddy, but this is insignificant, while the death of a child would presumably be a very bad thing" At first, you note the casual, understated rationality of his words. But, as he goes on to say "the uncontroversial appearance of this argument is deceptive". Considerations of distance, or how many potential rescuers there might be, are irrelevant: the child you see dying of malnutrition or a preventable disease on the foreign news has as much of a claim on you as the child in the pond. Spending your surplus income on consumer treats rather than efforts to end extreme poverty, he concludes, isn't greatly different morally from leaving the toddler to drown. If you scale up Singer's argument, then the same is true of Governments. It is in their power to prevent something very bad from happening, they do not have to sacrifice anything morally significant to do it. Therefore they ought, morally, to do it. The creative community gets it. That's why celebrities gain more traction than politicians. And our moral duty to intervene could prove the most compelling argument for those people (i.e. most of us) who have lost faith with the ability of a discredited political class to bring about change. Danny Boyle - I salute you.