Punjab is said to have benefitted the most from the Green Revolution. Documentary filmmakers Kavita Bahl and Nandan Saxena break this myth of prosperity in their award-winning film, Candles in the Wind. The film, which received a special mention at the 61st National Film Awards, shows how the State has witnessed escalating farmer suicides caused by policy-induced non-remunerative agriculture. Screened last month across the city, the film focuses on farmer widows, who have lived through harsh circumstances after their husbands committed suicide due to mounting debts. The responsibility of repaying the ever-increasing debts falls on them.
“The Punjab Government gives the widows a pension of Rs. 250 per month. Can a widow survive on this money? Can she repay her loan?” asks Nandan. “Most of these women are suffering from depression but cannot afford treatment. They are holding on to their small land holdings in the hope that the government shall one day wake up to their plight and waive-off the loan amount. Surviving in a patriarchal society is not easy, either. The strategies of survival and re-negotiation of spaces lends itself to a nuanced understanding of the silent under-currents of a gender-specific struggle in the larger narrative of surviving as a farmer in these times. "
“Farm-widows are the worst affected, as they learn to cope with the loss in their lives within the ambit of their altered social and economic reality,” adds Kavita in an email interview. “ Candles in the Wind witnesses the silent march of these women as they re-negotiate the rules of engagement and the politics of domination in their bid to survive. Their struggle gives us a window into the social-economic flux rural Punjab is witnessing.”
The duo—whose other films include Cotton for my Shroud and Dammed —mostly filmed in the Malwa belt of Punjab, including Sangrur, Bathinda and Mansa districts. “The Malwa belt is also the cotton belt of Punjab. Wheat and rice is also grown here. Over the years, thousands of farmers have committed suicide in this belt alone. Our field visits corroborate this as each village we visited had multiple suicide victims. There are many families that have had three suicides. Besides the loss incurred in agriculture, there are other reasons behind farmers taking loans. With soil and crop contamination, the incidence of cancer has reached an alarming proportion here. Farmers take huge loans for cancer treatment, adding to their financial distress. The government systematically dismantled rural banking from the 1960s. The Punjab government also refuses to pass any law governing private moneylenders. Non-remunerative agriculture chokes the option of ever getting out of the debt spiral and drives the farmers to suicide,” says Nandan.
Breaking the myth that the Green Revolution ushered in an era of prosperity for Indian agriculture, Nandan says: “There is nothing ‘green’ in the Green Revolution. Corporationsknew that increased chemical input would bring a spurt in grain production in the first few years. That would crush any dissent and allow them to embark upon a path that only leads to the decimation of agriculture that is people-centric and sustainable. We all discuss yields, not the nutrition that these hybrids and genetically modified crops give us or why one should contaminate the genome of a plant species with a bacterium, which is against the order of Nature.”
The duo offers workshops in photography and filmmaking to raise resources for their films. They are planning to hold workshops in the city in July.
