Monday, July 26, 2010

Peepli Live: Its relevance to India at large.

India is basically an agrarian economy, even now, with a large percentage of our population employed in agricultural sector, and most of government's income coming from that sector as well. But then there is a big problem when the very spine of our economy is driven to commit suicide.





The case of farmer's suicide came into light in India in 1990s, those were tough times, with economy still under wraps with a socialistic flavor, government in a way kept in all under the mat. Still there is no real data to highlight how many farmers committed suicide in that period. Then in 2000s when media got more power, between 2002-2006 it was reported some 17,500 committed suicide EVERY YEAR, thats like 87,500 suicides in 5 years. With 17,060 suicides in 2008, total number of suicides since 1997 came out to be staggering 199,132.

Now a movie called Peepli Live is soon to be released which deals with pretty much the same issue, in a satirical tone. But its not just a movie, farmers committing suicide because they can't pay their loans to banks and land lords is nothing new, so are the cases when its done just so their family can get some compensation and atleast they can eat food at the cost of one's life.

Not only the problem of farmers is shown in the movie, at the same time itsa dig on 24 hour news channels who are willing to exploit conditions of other human beings to get better TRPs, but not exactly helping them. Ministers are too busy going to "meet" these farmers and exploit them for their political gains, again not to help them.

Movie in a way promises to be a real showcase of rural India where farmer suicide is not exactly shocking. Peepli live I hope connects to people all across since it promises to be a real issue, not just about 3 idiots trying to fly a plane or one aspergers patient  trying to save 100 people from flood, all single handedly

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