[Reader-list] Gentle Reminder: Bengaluru talkies: Screening of Nero's Guests on 3rd May, 2015, Time- 18:30 @ Paradigm Shift

Kabir Khan kabirkhan1989 at gmail.com
Sat May 2 08:06:43 CDT 2015


Last week Venkaiah Naidu, Minister of Urban Development, stated in Lok
Sabha (lower house of Indian Parliament) that no farmer in India wants to
continue with farming. Off lately, this statement has become a rage in
middle class households, it is important to recite it twice a day to call
oneself a patriot and pro-development citizen. The words of the minister
are being repeated every week in one of the op-ed page columns of 'The
Indian Express' newspaper by a fellow who calls himself an 'economist'.
There are discussions on the ongoing myth that if nation desires progress
the farmers should offer their lands at throwaway prices for 'development'.

While we all are singing the jingle of development, good days and service
to nation, the providers of food are committing suicides across the country.

Further, in the times of rural distress Union Government has decided to cut
down on many social security measures like Mahatma Gandhi National Rural
Employment Guarantee Act (Scheme), Right to Education, food security and
Health schemes etc. which largely support the poor landless peasants and
small farmers. The austerity drive of the government is pushing them to the
fringes by increasing their expenditures on basic amenities needed for
human survival. Farmers are forced to sell their lands. To facilitate the
process and to ensure that buyers who are largely the rich corporations
have backend support, government is trying to bring amendments to 'Right to
Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and
Resettlement Act, 2013'.

Now what is not asked is 'why instead of facilitating sale of land, a
democratically elected government is not doing enough for the farmers?' it
seems that those who are in power are not aware of miseries of farmers.
They are behaving like Nero who was playing flute while Rome was burning.
Apathetic attitude of those who are on the chair is not ending there, they
are making foolish and ignorant comments saying farmers die every day and
for their own reason and nation needs no answer for that.

Farmers are committing suicide and almost every hour and day! Wait a
minute... after all that what is stated here, are they really committing
suicide, low compensation for crop damage, near to no social security,
increasing survival costs and facilitation of land sale. Is it not state
sponsored mass murder or better say genocide as defined in Geneva
Convention?
Let's pause here. It is high time that we accept that this reality,
suicides, state sponsored murders and genocide exists. To show the evidence
of it we have decided to screen 'Nero's Guest' at Paradigm Shift on the
coming Sunday:

Date: 3rd May, 2015
Time: 18:30
Venue: Paradigm Shift, 3rd- 4th Floor, 8, Above GKB Optical, 80 Feet Road,
Koramangala 4th Block, Near Sony Signal, Bangalore.

Acceptance of what is happening around us will probably force to challenge
the existing notion, ask uncomfortable questions to those who are the helms
of affair and to those who manage the show for them, that's the need of the
hour. Do come and help in formulating questions against the status quo.

About Nero's Guest: Nearly 2, 00, 000 farmers have committed suicide in
India over the last 10 years. But the mainstream media hardly reflects
this. Nero´s Guests is a story about India's agrarian crisis and the
growing inequality seen through the work of the Rural Affairs Editor of
Hindu newspaper, P Sainath. Through sustained coverage of the farm crisis,
Sainath and his colleagues created the national agenda, compelling a
government in denial to take notice and act. Through his writings and
lectures, Sainath makes us confront the India we don't want to see, and
provokes us to think about who 'Nero's Guests' are in today's world.
For more details you can write to us: email-
paradigmshiftbangalore at gmail.com, call +919663427315 and visit our website:
www.paradigmshift.org.in


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