Your Kidney, My Profit: India Kideny Baazar

For years, India has been known as a “warehouse for kidneys” or a “great organ bazaar” and has become one of the largest centers for kidney transplants in the world, offering low costs and almost immediate availability. The country on the pahse of economic transition do have left the poor community to become much more poorer. For mere $500, people living in slum districts (not even an half hour distance from metro) are selling their kidneys and also being betrayed for saving rich people’s life.

This is a short documentary telecasted by PBS, where reporter Samantha interacts with the people in the slum district. The 10 minute film is titled, A Pound of Flesh: Selling kidneys to survive.


Traveling between Bangalore, India’s thriving technology center, and the slums to the south, Grant spoke to government officials, doctors, kidney brokers and donors to try to find out why so many people are still getting paid to give up their kidneys even though a law was passed 12 years ago to heavily regulate the practice. When Grant arrived in the slums of Chennai, about eight hours south by train from Bangalore, someone offered to sell her their kidney on the spot. “I was stunned,” she says.

Samantha Grant is a San Francisco-based documentary filmmaker who has reported for PBS, NPR and Current TV through her production company.

Worth a Watch !

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