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Nero's Guests

Nero's Guests

(Nero's Guests), Deepa Bhatia / IND, 2009
original version / English subtitles, 59 min

It is said that Nero used to burn prisoners to provide light at night. His guests stood alongside and watched. Nearly 200,000 farmers have committed suicide in India over the last 10 years. But the mainstream media hardly reflects this. Nero´s Guests is a story about India’s agrarian crisis and the growing inequality seen through the work of the Rural Affairs Editor of The Hindu newspaper, P Sainath. Through sustained coverage of the farm crisis, Sainath and his colleagues created the national agenda, compelling a government in denial to take notice and act. Through his writings and lectures, Sainath makes us confront the India we don’t want to see, and provokes us to think about who ‘Nero’s Guests’ are in today’s world.

This film is part of the program curated by Karan Bali, filmmaker and co-founder of Upperstall.com

This documentary film is in competition for the “Best Documentary” audience award.