Halfway through Danny Boyle's 2008 magnum opus, Slumdog Millionaire, a remarkable imperial gloating comes from Salim Malik, the “slumdog” turned hip and rich factotum of billionaire gangster Javed Khan. In a scene of reunion between the film's two brothers as young adults, Salim, perched cockily atop the ramparts of an unfinished luxury condominium complex in the heart of metropolitan Mumbai, crows preeningly to his younger sibling Jamal about the emerging centrality of twenty-first century India in the global economy, and of his own omphalic position within this Indo-centric world. As he preens, his gaze sweeps across the blossoming Mumbai skyline which, framed by the force of the hyperbolic utterance, appears in excess of New York City's or Shanghai's. Salim's ethnocentric boast about his own arrival from abject marginality into the power and prestige of a Dolce & Gabbana—accessorized human/Indian subjectivity is aimed at converting his brother Jamal from idealist to pragmatist, such that he, too, can prioritize a dream of capital over a dream of love. It is also a brashly articulated affirmation of India’s conversion from a “slumdog” nation to a “millionaire” capital of the world, from an aid recipient country to a major global player, a developer of the economies of other nations, even.