Article - Nero's Guest (AVINASH PISHU CHABLANI 1313104)

This Is a critical analysis in the form of an article on nero's guests by P.Sainath. This is to bring out the major aspects of the documentary.

AN ARTICLE ON NERO’S GUESTS

Mr. P. Sainath starts off the documentary with a very strong statement and I quote “For me the issue was never ‘NERO’, it was NERO’s GUESTS.” Mr. P. Sainath is the rural affairs editor of The Hindu newspaper. He spent 5 and a half years covering farmer suicides where the rest of the world was busy watching Lakme Fashion Week. Where there were about 200,000 farmers who had died since 1997 it was surprising to notice that our so called ‘Media’ chose to focus more on a fashion show than the deaths of Indian farmers.

Almost about 60% of Indian citizens still depend on agriculture for their basic income. This documentary brings about India’s poverty wherein 836 million Indians live on less than 50 cents a day. The reason for all of this going unnoticed is because the mainstream media hardly reflects on this reality.

The reasons for the farmer suicides were mainly mortgage on land, farmer’s co-operative loans and bank loans. Most of the farmers were harassed for reasons of returning borrowed money. A majority of these farmers had children who were uneducated due to reasons of taking over their father’s occupation after their death. The families of these farmers were not given any government subsidies.

Mr. P. Sainath talks about this little girl who went by the name of Sudamani. This girl had lost her mother due to the agrarian crisis. When she was asked to share an enduring memory with her mother, she says I wish I had a memory of my mother of when she was not working. This agrarian crisis went on for 11 years and it dazed a lot of people because in 1998 it was one suicide a week, by 2002 it was one a day and now everyday in every district there are about 2-3 deaths.

Conditions had become so bad that a farmer who has been working for the past 6-7 years says that he has not seen a day when he has been able to treat his friends or buy clothes for his children and his wife and the reason behind all this being that due to government policies crop rates had increased and yet yielded no returns. The status of women during this time was that widows were not marginalized any land by their in laws and also were not entitled to compensation because society does not recognize women as farmers.

There are 311 rupee billionaires in India but still no help given to such people. Mr. P. Sainath explains the agrarian crisis in five simple words. He says it is the drive towards corporate farming.

This documentary does not only talk about the agrarian crisis. It also talks about the status of women, unemployment, illiteracy and gender bias. Mr. P. Sainath has left behind an amazing thought within us through his documentary Nero’s Guests.

- AVINASH PISHU CHABLANI
1st CEP

1313104