Hul Sengel: the Spirit of the Santal Revolution

India. The price of growth. The Jharkhand story

In 2002, in the Global Vision section, CinemAmbiente presented Images of India, the most complete video-documentation of the Narmada hydroelectricity project, one of the most ambitious yet environmentally devastating interventions a country has ever planned and built along a single river course.

In addition to the filmmakers, whose material is the sole trace of areas that have been wiped off the map, our guests included Nandini Oza, who represented the glorious Narmada Bachao Andolan movement that has continued a 20-year-long battle against the dam project in the hope of saving the sacred river, and Arundhati Roy, through whose personal and militant activism the issues surrounding the Narmanda, unlike other equally devastating and unsustainable development interventions, attracted enough attention, information and interest to generate widespread debate about the myth of the sustainability of large dams.

While the final chapter in the story of the Narmada is being written following this summer’s disastrous monsoons, CinemAmbiente once again directs attention to India, a country undergoing rapid growth, to shed light on the darker side of modernization. This year the focus centers on Jharkhand, a region that is striking because of the gap between its natural wealth (40% of India’s mineral resources) and the poverty of its inhabitants (53% living below the poverty line) – a glaring but significant paradox.

Unlike the Narmada, Jharkhand’s situation has never become “an issue”; instead, it has been snubbed by the media. Geographically and culturally remote, protected for centuries by thick jungles (Jharkhand means “land of forests”), holding a marginal place on post-colonial India’s political agenda, even after obtaining self-rule in November 2000, this new state was suddenly thrust last year into the economic and political spotlight for two reasons: - a “positive” rating by the McKinsey group that reported the presence of huge mineral resources, particularly coal and iron, and highlighted the “formidable potential” for profit from direct investment; - a growing naxalite militancy in its forests in reaction to the international

mining industry’s major players staking claim to the area. By February, 16 out of 22 districts were inaccessible to government forces.

In this anomalous, potentially explosive mixture of political, environmental and human rights conflicts, even India’s prime minister Manmohan Singh had to admit the situation was “one of India’s most critical domestic problems”. Daniela Bezzi, journalist and researcher, returning as this year’s curator of the Global Vision section, had the chance to conduct a first-hand study of the area.

Documents, interviews, photographs, videos: Bezzi has brought back copious documentation on the alarming effect the industrial boom has had on India, along with a series of compelling questions: who is paying for such enormous growth and who will benefit from it? What kind of opportunities do we mean when we project our expectation of “participation” onto such a scenario? Are they opportunities for making a real contribution to

helping a developing country overcome the hurdles of modernization or are they simply an excuse for ransacking? How aware are we or can we ignore the social and environmental disasters accompanying India’s growth? To what extent can we take part in this “modernization project” and share in the inevitable spiral of speculation or should we work for a more gradual, regulated pace of growth instead?