Yashowardhan Mishra

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In 2017, I saw a photo somewhere of a bill presented to a farmer from Maharashtra after he went to sell his produce at the mandi. It listed a usurious calculation that actually had him pay for his own crop, rather than earn a profit. It was, to me, an unbelievable story, and I later came across more such instances.These are part of a much large farm crisis in India, and it is imperative to widely discuss it. I believe my film Mandi can add to this very important conversation.  I have been following the People&#39;s Archive of Rural India and P. Sainath’s work for a while. In fact, it has been the basis of most of our research for Mandi. I am a huge admirer of the effort put in by the journalists working with PARI to report, locate and share with the world the stories of rural India. It is an honour for my film to be archived at PARI.

In this 10-minute film, Danaji, a farmer from Maharashtra, and his eight-year-old son Ganya, go to the city to sell onions at the mandi (market). Once there, the farmer is crushed by a battle over the price.  The film won the Silver at the Mumbai Academy of Moving Image (MAMI) festival, 2017, was nominated in the Best Film category at the New York Indian Film Festival, 2018, won the Best Screenplay Award at the Indian Film Festival of Cincinnati, 2018, and has been screened, among other festivals, at the Mumbai International Film Festival, 2018, the Silk Screen Asian American Film Festival, 2018, the Chittagong Short Film Festival, 2019, and the Chennai International Short Film Festival, 2019

Written and directed by Yashowardhan MishraFeaturing: Kailash Waghmare as Danaji Shrikant Yadav as Bhau Saheb Nihaal Joshi as Ganya  Meenakshi Rathod as Danaji&#39;s wife.Cinematography: Mayank Khurana and  Kunj GutkaEditing: Rohan KapoorMandi was released on Kunal Kamra&#39;s YouTube channel on June 19, 2019.

Short film: looting farmers at the Mandi

مختصر فلم: منڈی میں کسانوں سے لوٹ

କ୍ଷୁଦ୍ର ଚଳଚ୍ଚିତ୍ର: ମଣ୍ଡିରେ ଚାଷୀଙ୍କୁ ଲୁଟ୍‌

Mumbai

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Younger, media-saturated generations are growing up knowing little about their country, but a lot about the elites of a few metros and towns. For a narrowly-owned, commercially-driven media, the dumbing down of a nation is part of standard operating procedure. The last available data of the Centre for Media Studies (CMS, Delhi) show us that reports from New Delhi account for 66 per cent of news on the front pages of major dailies. The CMS data also found that just about 0.24 per cent of front page news came out of rural India. The TV channels are not much better.PARI exists to change that.We are a non-profit organisation. We publish under creative commons, and do not charge readers a subscription fee or put-up advertisements. Nothing is behind a paywall and we are completely free-to-access by anyone. We guard our independence and receive no direct grants from governments and corporations, nor any funding that could dictate our content. So, we are dependent on volunteer labour, donations from individuals, foundations and institutions that see value in independent and free media.PARI is changing the way Indian journalism reports and documents the rural.India is more than the elite of a few metros and towns. We report on rural lives and livelihoods, languages, communities, migrants and more. We need your help to pull off this most ambitious of Indian journalistic endeavours. The scale of this effort costs money. Donate generously - and spread the word about PARI.&nbsp;

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Short film: looting farmers at the Mandi

'Mandi' is an award-winning short film that draws on PARI's coverage of the agrarian crisis

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