SLUM TOURISM

MICHAEL CRONIN’s job as a college admissions officer took him to India two or three times a year, so he had already seen the usual sites — temples, monuments, markets — when one day he happened across a flier advertising “slum tours.”

“It just resonated with me immediately,” said Mr. Cronin, who was staying at a posh Taj Hotel in Mumbai where, he noted, a bottle of Champagne cost the equivalent of two years’ salary for many Indians. “But I didn’t know what to expect.”

^^^asshole

ok, i need to rethink this as i'm agreeing with shakes.

I'm just sayin... I've been to India, and you have to REALLY go out of your way to be oblivious to the amount of poverty there.

how about womb tourism? this disturbs me a bit more:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/10/world/asia/10surrogate.html?hp

Yonatan Gher and his partner, who are Israeli, plan eventually to tell their child about being made in India

we had a flyer for one of the favela tours at our hotel in rio. i was a little disturbed by it, although i was told that they're planned with permission from favela residents (often gang leaders who will promise access in exchange for immunity).

we did pass through cidade de deus on our way to our project site; we weren't there to gawk though.

slum tourism is like the ghetto lasagna of the tourist trade.

This reminds me that when people tried to write checks to the guys who were in Favela Rising, they said, keep your money and do something in YOUR city.