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Buckling under the baton
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The two documentaries screened by Vikalp on the rights of tribal people and industrial pollution had some mind-numbing images
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UNFAIR DEAL The film portrays the systematic crippling of the poor and washing out their voices of protest
In June this year, the Karnataka police released a list of 19 suspected naxal supporters and out of five who were killed near Sringeri, one was a naxalite, say activists. And Vittal Hegde of KRUVO (Kundremukh Rashtriya Udhyana Virodhi Okkuta) who has
been fighting for the rights of tribal people in the Kudremukh region, says the government has been using the “naxal” label to suppress tribal agitation – Tehelka, August 25.
And when the world debates hesitatingly over the Kyoto Protocol and pledge to change the climate in diplomatic sweet talk in the G8 Summit 2007, the Centre for Science and Environment in 2004 released a map representation(http://www.
cseindia.org/dte-supple
ment/industry20040215/industry.pdf) of severe industrial pollution that’s happening in our own dump yards, crippling the poor and washing out their voices of protest to live a life of dignity and health.
Screened by Films for Freedom-Vikalp recently, “Red Storm Uprising” directed by Nithya Nagaraj and “Miles to Go” by Nina Subramani documented two people’s movements against the State and the industry and their arbitrary control of spaces in the name of “development” and “progress”. One is in Malnad district of Karnataka, protesting the Scheduled Tribes (Recognition of Forest Rights) Bill, 2005 and against supposed quick-fix ‘rehabilitation’ measures. And the other followed the green trail of Greenpeace for 60 days in 2002, as they traversed seven states to capture and question ‘corporate crime’.
“Red Storm Uprising” follows the protests and rallies of forest-dwellers against their eviction, captures a cross-section of intellectuals, journalists, government officials and experts on the naxal movements in realistic, well-edited and perceptive shots that span a variety of opinions and ideological stands. And in between interviewing them, are red-tinted archival snippets of China’s Communist/Cultural revolution and revolutionary quotations from Mao Tse Tsung’s “The Little Red Book”, chronicling the growth and spread of the movement to India that is tempered in the film by haunting drum beats.
And as the campaigning rises in the Kundremukh forest reserve in Karnataka, tribal people and forest dwellers take out dharnas in a remonstration against being branded as “encroachers on forest land”. The thin red line that they tight-rope walk on, between anti-naxalite and pro-naxalite sympathisers, is depicted well as they chronicle the villagers’ and officials’ views. Often due to bureaucratic neglect and ignorance and the Bill being delayed, they begin to support naxal groups as they learn that if they don’t agitate, “the land will be given to MNCs who will own our forests.” And scrawled on walls are thought-provocative graffiti – “Wipe our tears, save us” and “Don’t push us to suicide.” And as Rabindra Ray, former naxalite and author of “Naxalites and their Ideology” dispels “romantic notions” of becoming naxalites who are “motivated by negative emotions and despair than positivism and that there is nothing attractive about it”, the narrator’s voice drones on that “ideology may separate, but anguish finds common ground…”
“Miles to Go” was another explicit fast-paced documentary that opens with Greenpeace activists in Bangalore brandishing fluorescent yellow “No more Bhopals” headbands. There are hilarious clips of an activist who poses as a journalist to win the attention of the Karnataka Pollution Control Board who unconvincingly declares, “we will close down the factory”. This becomes the infamous dismissive line used by other officials which echoes throughout the film as Greenpeace questions and brings to their notice horrific and graphic shots of pollution and its health impact.
As they carry out street theatre performances in Vellore, ghostly shots of ‘corporate crime scenes’ of ghastly effluents uncontrollably gushing into rivers and agricultural lands – and into people’s bodies as they drink the very same water and breathe the same air.
In a unique Children’s Day celebration, school-children take to the streets protesting against industrial pollution are caught in rousing snatches. And a confrontation with a corporate firm who has been accused of dumping mercury in Kodaikanal saw unjustified arrest warrants being sent out to the activists.
Silent slow-motion shots of white ash enveloping the soil-surface like a sheet of snow and wine-red liquid chemical snaking its way in like a stream of blood, foam ebbing against a river-bed and children in West Bengal who relate their stories of health-problems all run through in the ironic background of Louis Armstrong’s “What a Wonderful World” and Johann Strauss’s waltz “Blue Danube”. What was hair-raising and mind-numbing were the snapshots of radio-active affected cases in Bhatin, Jharkhand, of children who blankly stare into the camera. In adjoining frames, the film closed with the meaningless rendition by children of the National Anthem in a nation that ignores the rights of the voiceless who are economically-deprived. For more information on “Miles to Go”, log onto www.elephantcorridor.org
AYESHA MATTHAN
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Friday Review
Bangalore
Chennai and Tamil Nadu
Delhi
Hyderabad
Thiruvananthapuram
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