Indian farmers welcome Exit of ‘Peepli Live’ from Oscar

Nagpur-21^st January 2011

The rejection of India’s official entry to the Oscars in the best foreign language film category, Peepli live must have disappointed Amir khan and his team but it was matter celebration in dying field farm suicide hit vidarbha where farm widows have welcomed exist “Peepli Live”, which is now out of the race as the movie failed to reach the final list of nine films.

‘Lastly Oscar academy has respected sentiments of thousands of vidarbha farm widows by not selecting the “Peepli Live”,in the final list of nine films.

Earlier Vidarbha Jan Andolan Samiti (VJAS), a farmers’ advocacy group in Vidarbha region of Maharashtra, has objected to the selection of Aamir Khan’s “Peepli Live” as India’s official entry for the Oscars calling it as a “black comedy”. it is a wrong representation of the misery of the family members of farmers who committed suicide

“Rejection of “Peepli Live” will certainly avoid further the wrong projection of Indian agrarian crisis where around 200,000 farmers committed suicide in the last decade. The basic theme and script of the film is a satire on this serious issue. It would be absolutely wrong to say that farmers are committing suicide for compensation,” said Kishor Tiwari, president of VJAS after rejection of film from Oscar.

Vidarbha farmers and widows had Aug 15 protested the storyline of the film and burnt effigy of Amir Khan too .

“The farmers in any region of India commit suicide due to the wrong policies of the government, not because family members can live off the compensation they would get,” Vidarbha Jan Andolan Samiti (VJAS) president Kishor Tiwari added.

The film shows how the protagonist of the film (Natha) decides to commit suicide as he is about to lose his plot of land because he is unable to pay back the bank loan. The protagonist’s brother encourages Natha to commit suicide so that his family can live off the compensation money.

“People all over would have watch films and hence would have followed and believed in some storylines. Today when I am fighting to get compensation for 40,000 farmers’ widows, this movie sends out a wrong message. The farmers committed suicide due to several problems such as being unable to pay back the loans, infertile lands and continued sub-division of family owned plots of land, and not because they wanted their wives or family members to get compensation,” Tiwari said.