Back to the village

South Indian villages have been an almost closed world unto themselves for centuries …..this is no longer the case. Globalization has paved the way for cheap imports, handicrafts have been replaced by plastic goods, with the consequent loss of livelihood.  Less land, less water, and a massive population growth is forcing millions of villagers into the cities in search of work. While the south Indian city of Bangalore has been lauded as the world’s new IT capital, there is a dark side: two million slum dwellers, one quarter of its population, doesn’t have running water let alone a computer.

 BACK TO THE VILLAGE is a most timely and important documentary which focuses  on the growing rate of rural- urban migration and the problems this causes in both rural and urban South India.

 The film is timely: The  UNFPA Population Report 2007 UNFPA predicts a rapid urban growth particularly  in Africa and Asia where the urban population will double between 2000 and 2030. By 2030 the Developing Countries urban centres will make up 81 per cent of  urban humanity.. This growth of urban areas will include many poor people. The Report  claims that many policy-makers  continue to prevent urban growth by discouraging rural-urban migration with tactics such as evicting squatters and/or denying them services. These attempts to prevent migration are futile, counter-productive and above all  a violation of people’s rights.

 The film is important: It shows the disadvantages that result from the existing  exclusive focus on how to cope with the predicted rapid urban growth  by  devoting  all aid money and efforts to improving urban infra-structures so that the cities will be prepared to accommodate the  rapidly growing numbers of urban dwellers. There seems to be very little, if any realisation of the fact that rural-urban migration is for most villagers simply a survival strategy.  For increasing numbers of  them, land  no longer  provides an income for their families simply because the per capita land holdings even under ryotwari  land-tenure  continues to decline, while recurring water-shortages  reduce productivity and as  a result of rural-urban imbalances there are no alternative income-generating opportunities available in these rural areas.

This  26 minute documentary film BACK TO THE VILLAGES  is the result  of longitudinal anthropological style socio-economic studies  of two South Indian villages. Its major theme centres on the cause and effect  of rural-urban migration, a phenomenon that is strangling capitals in filth and its dwellers in misery in the developing world, as governments, pushed on by investment, in India and elsewhere, rush to build industrial centres, draining much needed funding to the rural sector.

The film is also a study of the  resilient Indian people and  takes us on a journey, where we experience the survival strategies in several rural societies, through the eyes of villagers themselves.

We visit a Bangalore garment industry geared for export to the US with a comfortable profit margin, thanks to an abundance of cheap labour.  We meet Ramana, a dalit (Scheduled Caste), who moved from his village to a Bangalore slum. He’s is a marble polisher who lives in a dank room with three others and earns two US dollars a day.. Kempegowda, on the other hand had a friend in the city, enabling him to start a small video company…. a one-time peasant, he’s now graduated to the ranks of the middle class. 

The film is  a thought provoking, study which provides in-depth perspectives  of the consequences of an all too consuming emphasis on  intense economic growth at all costs, which the large donor agencies and  the Government believe will benefit also the poorest in the society. However,  the Indian reality is that today 75% of the population, its poorest still live in  the villages.

The Film has already been shown in Washington DC at the World Bank, USAID, The World Resource Centre,  The Development Alternative Initiatives, Cleveland University, the London school of Economics, International Development Centre Sussex University and in London at Portcullis House.

The Indian  Authorities have  not yet given permission for the film to be shown in India.

Length:     26 min. Professional DVCAM video (TV broadcast quality)

Producers and Directors: Richard Wasserman and Nagathihalli Chandrashekar

Consultants: Dr. T. Scarlett Epstein OBE and Mr. T. Thimmegowda. IAS

Click here to see a film clip of this documentary online.