Following the Oscar success of “Slumdog Millionaire,” Indian authorities will repay the main young actors in the movie with new homes in Mumbai. 

Two of the children who starred in the Oscar-winning film as the young versions of the movie's central characters, Latika and Salim, in the rags-to-riches romance about a poor Indian boy competing for love and money on a TV game show, will move in new homes.

“These two children have brought laurels to the country, and we have been told that they live in slums, which cannot even be classified as housing,” said Gautam Chatterjee, head of the Maharashtra Housing and Area Development Authority.

Rubina Ali, 9, and Azharuddin Ismail, 10, who were discovered by casting agents in Mumbai's Garib Nagar slum, currently live in shacks in Bandra East, Mumbai.  Rubina lives with her family in a one-bedroom hut next to an open sewer, while Azharuddin and his family live under a scrap of tarpaulin next to a busy road.

Around half of Mumbai's population live in slums and authorities in the state of Maharashtra have long been under pressure to improve conditions there.

The moves come as a reaction to the public outcry sparked by pictures of the child stars living in squalor despite the $15 million movie earning over $100 million since its North American release in November.

“They deserve to be rewarded for the film’s success at the Oscars. The chief minister [of the state] has approved this. Their families will receive notification in a couple of days,” added Amarjeet Singh Manhas, the chairman of the Maharashtra Housing and Area Development Authority.

The children’s parents recently complained that they barely got any money from the film makers, and already spent most of it. However, the movie’s director, Danny Boyle, and producer Christian Colson rejected claims of exploiting the children saying they were paid above local Indian wages. Before the authorities stepped in, Boyle had promised to provide all means necessary for building the children and their families new homes.

“For 30 days work, the children were paid three times the average local annual adult salary,” a Fox Searchlight spokesman was quoted by Daily Telegraph as saying.

Additionally, the children were enrolled in school for the first time, with a fund set up to pay for their education. The fund was seeded with the $15,000 prize money that the movie won as the audience-choice film at the Toronto Film Festival.

On Sunday night, the children attended the 81st Academy Awards ceremony after being flown to Hollywood for the event. They had never left India before. As part of the trip, the children visited Universal studios and Disneyland, and received autographs from stars such as Daniel Craig and Meryl Streep.