Events

The film shows rural, adivasi women from the villages of Raigarh, Chhattisgarh critiquing the grand plan of development of the country. As mines and power plants appear and grow in monstrous proportions around them, many of them have been cheated of their land and compensation. Their relationship with the forest and environment has been severed, leaving them surrounded by a toxic, polluted, gutted earth. As they grapple with all this, they seek justice for themselves and their communities and share their thoughts about how a country should be.

The screening will be followed by a panel discussion. Dr. Feyzi Ismail, Dr. Jens Lerche and Richard Harkinson will be on the panel.

Speakers:

1) Dr. Feyzi Ismail is Senior Teaching Fellow in Development Studies at SOAS and Lecturer in Media, Communications and Cultural Studies at Goldsmiths. Her areas of teaching and research include neoliberalism and imperialism, NGOs and social movements, and politics and development in Nepal and South Asia. She is active in the anti-austerity and anti-war movements in Britain.

2) Dr. Jens Lerche is Reader in Labour and Agrarian Studies in the Department of Development Studies at SOAS, University of London, and an editor of Journal of Agrarian Change. His research focuses on India. He works on Dalits and labour relations; class and caste; unfree labour and rural labour migration; struggles, movements and labour organisations. He has published on agricultural development, caste and labour in India for more than two decades, and he had edited several books and special journal issues on labour and agrarian studies in India, and on the Indian state Uttar Pradesh. Recent publications include the co-authored book (with Alpa Shah, R. Axelby, D. Benbabaali, B. Donegan, J. Raj and V. Thakur) Ground Down by Growth. Tribe, Caste, Class and Inequality in Twenty-first-century India (Pluto Press and OUP India, 2018).

3) Richard Harkinson has been working with the London Mining network since 2011. He is presently working on advocacy/research within EU institutions [Parliament, Commission] on mining waste management. He also works on the use of biodiversity offsetting by mining companies.