For a journalist, it is easy to grasp the reality of the situation, but it is also the media’s fault when an issue gets out of control. That is exactly what happens in Anusha Rizvi’s film ‘Peepli Live’. The film’s story (it has also been written by Anusha Rizvi) revolves around a simple man called Natha, and how he is dragged into a ‘suicide’, which the media aims to air live. Considering farmer suicides have been rampant in India over the past few years because of the low grain procurement and extreme poverty – and even though this is the case with many other countries around the world too – this was the driving force that led Anusha to make ‘Peepli Live’.
Anusha Rizvi, along with her co-director Mahmood Farooqui and casting director Danish Hussain came to Pakistan from India recently. On Sunday evening a film screening and discussion session was held in their honour at the HRCP auditorium, especially in connection with the Faiz centennial. The event had been organised by Faiz Ghar, and Salima Hashmi and Meera Hashmi were both present at the occasion.
Anusha was a journalist in the famous NDTV of India, an electronic media news channel. “But I couldn’t deal with the news media any longer,” she confesses. As can be seen in the film, reporters in the news media are portrayed like flocks of hungry vultures spinning around literally waiting for their prey to die. “The idea popped into my head when I saw Prime Minister Manmohan Singh visit this village, where about a hundred farmers had killed themselves,” says Anusha. “He distributed about 50,000 Rupees to each of them, and I thought to myself, ‘Well the farmers have already died and giving them money wont increase grain procurement will it?”
Nevertheless the film was made and the PM saw it, but ironically, Anusha laughs, the point made in the film was just reflected in reality. The PM turned around to one of the bureaucrats and said ‘you must do something about this issue’. And the rest of the government officials and media present thought the blame lay on each other.
However the film had a mixed response from society. Many people appreciated the hard hitting impact the ending gave. Those who lauded the film thought it was very realistic and a relevant issue. But there were others who called it ‘poverty porn’.
“I find this a very irritating criticism which especially comes from people abroad,” says Anusha. “They question why I am selling a ‘poverty stricken’ or bad image of India.” She waives aside that accusation and does not even comment on it. But she does say that the film is for an Indian audience, rather than a Western one. Though it has won a Durban film festival award, the movie is more related to the farmers in a certain region. “It is not as if anyone else would not understand the film,” she says. “But my focus lies basically on the audiences of the sub-continent. In the end the story is about a farmer in the film called Hori, who dies due to starvation, weakness, old age and no one cares about him, and it is about a small time print reporter Rakesh, who is used by the TV journalist, but in the end, no one cares what he is about. It must be taken by seeing the whole picture.”
So if the media people were shown to be hungry vultures, and those in power were using it to their utmost, who was the real antagonist? “It is the State of course,” she says without batting an eyelash. “The media are dominated by corporate rules. But it is the State that makes the laws. And in order to solve this problem, though I believe nothing happens overnight; still political will can be the only the tool that will work. And that will come through the people.”
