Documentary gives insight into land and its people

Tribune News Service

Amritsar, January 11

In Punjab over 50,000 farmers have committed suicide in the last 10 years by consuming toxic chemicals, which is also affecting the soil in the state. How many more lives are at stake, no one knows?

Punjab has been referred to a state dealing with drug addiction so rampant that it has managed to disturb the social, economic and cultural fabric of the state. But the documentary, Toxification, based on the fact that the soil of Punjab has been poisoned with over use of chemicals, deals with an addiction of different kind. Screened at hermitage, rehabilitation centre for recovering addicts, the documentary talked about the land of Punjab being addicted to pesticides and chemicals, an addiction that has been created by man himself. Made by UK-based filmakers Leva Kwestany and Rehmat Rayatt, the documentary captures fields, farmers and the problem of the over use of chemicals but in doing so, it brings out the core of the rampant drug addiction among farming community.

“After Green Revolution, the over dependency of land on fertilisers and chemical pesticides resulted in the overdose that has slowly poisoned the land. Similarly, the growing agrarian crisis and the debt-ridden farmers became dependent on drugs to work for longer periods in their lands. This problem has become so deep rooted that one has to really understand the co-relation and then talk about solutions,” said Dr JPS Bhatia, drug de-addiction expert and neuro-psychiatrist.

He further asserted that detoxification of Punjab and the farmers is the need of the hour. “Rehabilitation centres should be promoted for both processes, if any solution has to found for the agrarian as well as this socio-economic crisis.”

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