how is it that a movie like sdm that shows the lives of the poor in india is "an attempt to sell India," but all the crappy love stories marketed and produced about rich indian families such as K3G marketed to us in the diaspora that nostalgic immigrants consume and feed their hapless kids isn't??!! Maybe it's easy for the middle and upper classes to identify and aspire to the affluence reflected by the inhabitants of those movies, but it's harder to do so when the protagonists are poor and their opportunities few. I noticed this reluctance to deal with the hierarchical mentality when I was in india the last couple years, a mentality that allows this writer to say that the poor have no dignity. Indeed, it's only those who are insecure about their own dignity that cannot grant their fellow man the dignity that they were born with. I ran into many people like this when I was in India; once, in a bathroom this rich kid was trashing the attendant. When I confronted him, he backed off. And this kid was an Indian student who studied in the UK. Apparently, denigrating others is in fashion when you return to India. It's unfortunate, because everyone is striving to make something of themselves, an act that requires a modicum of dignity, and to assert otherwise ensures that vast numbers of the poor will absorb and perpetuate the second-class mentality this writer seeks to attribute to them, preventing them from using their talents the few moments they may have the opportunity to do so.