“As the film revels in the violence, degradation and horror, it invites you, the Westerner, to enjoy it, too…Slumdog Millionaire is poverty porn,” wrote London Times’ columnist Alice Miles.

The phrase “poverty porn” spread across the Indian media as commentators nodded in agreement or shook their heads even before the film premiered in its native Mumbai and India could (legally) watch it.

A group of the city’s slum dwellers, including children, protested against the word “dog”. A social activist filed a defamation case in Patna. And this week, hundreds of slum dwellers in Bihar’s capital ransacked a movie theatre demanding the title be changed.

So, is it really “poverty porn” for the Westerner’s delectation? Are beatings, torture, and the maiming of street beggars a sick form of adult exotica?

Perhaps the question can be rephrased: does a morbid fascination with the suffering of others find a place in art and is “Slumdog” are a striking example of this?

Be it a film on the Nazi holocaust, or based on crime, or a painful examination of the horrors of drug abuse (Trainspotting?), viewers can gawk at the world’s dirty underbelly whether or not they would describe themselves as pain perverts.

But the film has caused real offense in some parts.

“‘Slumdog’ is just every scrap of dirt picked up from every corner and piled up together to try and hit back at the growing might of India. And the awards almost seem like a sadistic effort to show the world — look we knew that this was India, and these are the slumdogs we are outsourcing our jobs to,” wrote management consultant and film producer Arindam Chaudhuri on his blog.

Chaudhuri and others say the film crosses the line into stereotype in a way that “stinks of racial arrogance” and is designed to undermine India’s inevitable rise on the world stage.

According to Chaudhuri, the film serves up “India as the accidental millionaire, which in fact happens to be a slumdog”.

But take the critically acclaimed movie “La Haine” (Hate), about life in the grim suburbs of Paris. Riots, needless bloodshed, police’ brutal treatment of immigrants and monotonous poverty are its subject matter and there is no happy ending.

Should France have rushed to the city’s defence and said the (French) director wallowed in the city’s troubles when Paris has so much more to offer? Could he not have made a film set in the Louvre, the Eiffel Tower and the world-famous catwalks?

Should “City of God” have apologised for being set in the troubled slums of Rio and because it didn’t address Brazil’s own emergence on the world stage?

The director of “Slumdog”, Danny Boyle, is up for an Academy Award. But some panned the film on its own perceived demerits and said it does not deserve 10 Oscar nominations — three for music director A.R. Rahman will do. The three people I went to see it with were underwhelmed.

Some saw the film as trite and inconsistent. For example, the hero’s sudden knowledge of English after his stint as a guide at the Taj Mahal came under scrutiny, especially since it allowed Boyle to shoot large chunks of the film in his native tongue.

Whether or not a moviegoer wants to spend his money on a film set in slums seems a matter of taste, but with more expected protests in India, the controversy has not died down.

“To define is to limit,” wrote T.S. Eliot.

Indeed sometimes, to limit things, they just may have been defined in a particular manner.

This struck home when I saw a communication by the World Bank on poverty estimates.

The World Bank produced an update of poverty numbers for the developing world based on an international price survey conducted in 2005.

The latest figures put the percentage of India’s people living below $1.25-a-day poverty line at 42 percent in 2005. This was an improvement on the 60 percent figure in 1981.

On the other hand, the government’s Economic Survey 2007-08 claims a poverty ratio of 22 percent for the country.

There is a huge difference between the two figures. According to the World Bank figure nearly half of India is defined as poor.

This rankles and also gets my attention a bit more than the previous figure. Perhaps it is the same for you.

So whose poor is really poor?

More importantly which figure is the one we want to believe? Which figure do we think conforms to our self image as a nation with the third-fastest growing economy, even after the global recession?

Here is a pop quiz.

How many items of clothing and footwear did you buy over the last one year?

Even if you are no Imelda Marcos, the chances are that the question has stumped you. Do you really keep track of these purchases?

Well, apparently the Planning Commission depends upon people doing so and being able to remember them when approached by the National Sample Survey Organisation for working out the poverty estimates.

This may or may not detract from the accuracy of the findings but it is nevertheless a thought.

Maybe the poor, or at least those who are classified as such, do remember for they have hardly purchased anything.

The Times of India reported last year on an affidavit filed by the Ministry for Health and Family Welfare before the Supreme Court which claims that if a person earns 455 rupees a month in an urban area then she is above the poverty line and hence not classified as poor. That’s 15.67 rupees in daily earnings.

Often, once consensus has been built on a particular fact, it is difficult to move arguments and policies that have been woven around it.

The subtleties and the arcane methodologies that may temper any statistician’s faith in his own figures never enter the popular realm.

The statistics are generated for and by the middle classes, the poor rarely get to see them or use them to enliven their lives even through an argument over a cup of tea.

It is the middle classes who manufacture and consume these statistics that should be more circumspect.

It should be noted that the World Bank estimate of poverty at 24 percent, based on the dollar-a-day poverty line as opposed to $1.25-a-day, is more in tune with the Economic Survey.

Shouldn’t we in tandem with the growing stature of our economy choose a more generous definition of poverty especially for the purpose of public discourse?

Or do we want to continue indulging and deluding ourselves with the same sort of creative accounting as the Satyam promoters did and meet our come-uppance one day?

India’s 80-year-old opposition leader says he needs help on “money matters”.

Not only does his wife pay all the bills at home, but he asked business leaders on Tuesday for help in drawing up a new economic model which does not ape the West.

He also had some strong words for the Congress-led government, accusing it of failing to control inflation and failing to bridge the gap between the rich and the poor.

When Advani’s own coalition government was in power, it followed pretty similar policies, except with more emphasis on privatisation of state-run companies. But it lost power partly for claiming that India was shining, when poverty was still rampant.

So it’s fair enough to look for economically sustainable ideas to help India’s poor, in fact it is probably essential to address widespread poverty more aggressively.

But is Advani being realistic to suggest there is an alternative to a “Western” development model in the modern world?

And is it right that a man who could be India’s next prime minister so blithely admits to not really understanding economics or money matters?