Oct 16: Film on farmer suicides in India

On World Food Day, come watch an interesting film and hear about how a local group is using sustainable agriculture to solve social and economic problems. Pittsburgh's Association for India's Development (AID) invites you to a screening of Nero's Guests: The Age of Inequality, a film by Deepa Bhatia.

The program will start with a 15-minute overview of two current agriculture-related AID projects in India: Kisan Swaraj Yatra, co-organized by AID, in which activists are traveling all over India and spreading awareness about sustainable practices in agriculture; and Low External Input Sustainable Agriculture, a project on sustainable non-chemical farming, supported by AID Pittsburgh. The 1-hour documentary will be screened following these presentations.

About the documentary
Nearly 200,000 farmers have committed suicide in India over the last 10 years, but the mainstream media hardly reflects this. Nero´s Guests (www.nerosguests.com) is a story about India’s agrarian crisis and the growing inequality seen through the work of a renowned journalist P. Sainath. Through his writings and lectures, Sainath makes us confront the India we don’t want to see, and provokes us to think about who the ‘Nero’s Guests’ are in today’s world.

5 p.m. in 100 Porter Hall on the Carnegie Mellon University campus, Pittsburgh, PA, 15213 (Map: http://tinyurl.com/378pgh5 ). Free and open to the public. For more information, email aidpittsburgh@gmail.com

About P. Sainath
P. Sainath, Rural Affairs Editor of The Hindu, is the 2007 winner of the Ramon Magsaysay Award, Asia’s most prestigious prize (and often referred to as the ‘Asian Nobel’), for Journalism Literature and Creative Communications Arts. Winner of over 35 global and national awards, his work on the problems faced by the rural farming communities is the largest
work on the current agrarian crisis in India. His writings go far beyond the realm of journalism and reports, capturing the complex and fundamental issues of the Indian agriculture system and society which have been overlooked by the academicians and policy makers. Through sustained level coverage, Sainath and his colleagues have created a national agenda through this film, compelling the government to take notice and act.

About Deepa Bhatia
Deepa Bhatia is a filmmaker based in Mumbai. She has worked with acclaimed directors like Govind Nihalani & Jahnu Barua. She has been the editor of many popular works like 'My name is Khan', 'Rock On' and 'Taare Zameen Par'. Deepa has also been involved in research on several documentaries & films. Nero's guests is her first independent documentary.

About AID
The Association for India's Development is dedicated to promoting grass roots development efforts in India that organize communities for health care, education, small enterprise, alternate energy, environmental action and people's rights. AID is a registered 501 (c)(3) non-profit organization. Visit http://pittsburgh.aidindia.org for details on the activities of the Pittsburgh chapter.

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