Screening of Mahua Memoirs

[Praveer Peter JHARKHAND India]

Open Space (Ranchi) and Vriksh invite you to the screening of Mahua
Memoirs. The screening will be followed by discussions on environment.

MAHUA MEMOIRS • directed by Vinod Raja • produced in collaboration
with Equations and HIVOS (Duration 32 min)
Date - 21st November 2009
Time - 3.30 pm
Venue - Satyabharati Auditorium, Purulia Road, Ranchi.

Mahua Memoirs portrays the struggle of indigenous people against big
money and the powers that be who destroy their natural habitat and way
of life for centuries by granting mining leases. The region around
Orissa, Chattisgarh, Andhra Pradesh and Jharkhand is rich in bauxite,
iron ore, chromite and other mineral deposits that national and
international corporations are scrambling to secure mining leases and
create plants to process them into aluminum, iron or other metals. At
a cost benefit ratio of 1:100 odd this is big money for the global
conglomerates with the Indian government getting only a miniscule
portion of the proceeds. The original dwellers of the land are hustled
out of their natural habitats and shoved into settlements and an
existence that they are absolutely not tuned to.

The adivasi present their case in Mahua Memoirs. It is difficult to
miss the thrust of the argument when a young girl in the Niyamgiri
hills, threatened with eviction because of mining, wonders how she
will survive in a new area that does not have mangoes, tubers and
other local fruits.
The film follows Thirku, a Baiga from the Maikal Hills, practising
shifting cultivation, and Saloo, a bard. It takes us to some well known
—and some not so well known—mining locales. The most infamous of
mining cases are there; Vedanta and Kalinga Nagar, for example.