{"id":2413,"date":"2011-07-26T01:38:33","date_gmt":"2011-07-26T01:38:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/film\/?p=2413"},"modified":"2011-08-06T19:19:40","modified_gmt":"2011-08-06T19:19:40","slug":"neros-guests","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/film\/2011\/07\/neros-guests.html","title":{"rendered":"Nero’s Guests"},"content":{"rendered":"

Genre<\/a> : Documentary
\nYear<\/a> : 2009
\nRunning time : 1 hour
\nDirector : Deepa Bhatia<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

A quarter of a million Indian farmers have committed suicide since 1995. Sound shocking ? Well, I\u2019m not making this stuff up \u2013 this is still happening, in present day \u201cshining\u201d India. And this is the subject of Deepa Bhatia\u2019s documentary \u201cNero\u2019s Guests\u201d, which I happened to watch via the NDTV Documentary series. In it, Bhatia and her crew follow around P. Sainath<\/a> as he visits and documents the conditions of the farming community in Maharashtra.<\/p>\n

Sainath, along with being the Rural Affairs Editor for The Hindu is also the recipient of the Ramon B. Magsaysay Award (sometimes called the Asian Nobel) for Journalism. Sainath reports widely on marginalized sections of society and his writing has appeared on India Together<\/a> besides the Hindu.<\/p>\n

In <\/a>\u201cNero\u2019s Guests\u201d, which is presumably so named because of the the legend in which Emperor Nero burnt his guests for light, Sainath is \u00a0the heartfelt and vociferous voice for the marginalized farmers, and brings to attention the agrarian crisis in modern India. In the film, Sainath visits many of the affected areas, and you see him talk to the farmers and document their woes . He also talks directly to the camera, presumably at his home, where he brings from his documents photos of the people who have passed.<\/p>\n

One is affected as you see him talk of hapless folk like the woman farmer who committed suicide, and whose family was ineligible for compensation from the government because the state did not recognize females as farmers \u2013 women could only be the wives, mother, sisters or daughters of male farmers. He tells us, as he shows us a photograph of a mother and son, of the emptiness in the boy\u2019s eyes after the father has committed suicide. \u00a0He talks of the feeling of humiliation and helplessness he feels \u00a0when he faces desperate farmers and knows that there is nothing that he can do to alleviate their troubles. And he tells with visible emotion of the cold hard fact that when he meets family members of a deceased farmer he can see that they are planning the same fate for themselves. Such is the desperation.<\/p>\n

India\u2019s farmers are a poor lot. In this film they relate their woes. With the cost of farming having gone up and the returns paltry in comparison farmers find it hard to make ends meet, and are often indebted to corrupt moneylenders. With debt multiplying (farmers in the film talk of debts of 2 lakh rupees, about $4000) and no ray of hope in sight farmers are committing suicide. In the film, Sainath visits a local village hospital and while he is there, two men bring in a third who is violently throwing up. As the camera follows the three into the dark, dank, dismal looking hospital building, we are told that the man has swallowed pesticide.<\/p>\n

This is an important film, and it tells an important tale. Well-directed, this film gives us news that the mainstream media deems unfit to report on. \u201cNero\u2019s Guests\u201d is a must-see. Kudos to Bhatia and Sainath !<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Genre : Documentary Year : 2009 Running time : 1 hour Director : Deepa Bhatia A quarter of a million Indian farmers have committed suicide since 1995. Sound shocking ? Well, I\u2019m not making this stuff up \u2013 this is … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":{"twitter_17000648_17000648":"","facebook_10233691416821117_190635594420624":""},"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","_uag_custom_page_level_css":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[70,78,15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2413","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-70","category-documentary","category-recommended"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":false,"thumbnail":false,"medium":false,"medium_large":false,"large":false,"1536x1536":false,"2048x2048":false,"post-thumbnail":false,"sow-carousel-default":false},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"amodini","author_link":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/film\/author\/admin"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"Genre : Documentary Year : 2009 Running time : 1 hour Director : Deepa Bhatia A quarter of a million Indian farmers have committed suicide since 1995. Sound shocking ? Well, I\u2019m not making this stuff up \u2013 this is … Continue reading →","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p45CAb-CV","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/film\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2413","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/film\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/film\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/film\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/film\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2413"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/film\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2413\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2469,"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/film\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2413\/revisions\/2469"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/film\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2413"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/film\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2413"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/film\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2413"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}