Director’s Vision Statement
Filmmaker Ramesh Yanthra on Tractor Story...
The development of the social system and its infrastructure is a common thing in developing countries. There are many consequences that are raised unknowingly from these developments. Some private sectors with a fraudulent marketing strategy, to ease up their goodness betray innocent people. In this betrayal, mostly illiterate tribal village people are affected, mostly farmers. In India, the measures that are taken for urban and village development have many advantages but have a few disadvantages which are unavoidable. For example, If the Government plans to construct a national highway among the villages. Firstly, The village people lose their farming land; secondly, nearby lands are occupied by private sectors to make real estate business. So, these farming lands are occupied by some private real estate companies and illiterate people fall for their fake advertisements and get betrayed. The real estate agencies are buying farmlands that are nearby highways, getting approval as housing units from the government, and trying to sell at a high value, which has no scope for future sale or real opportunities.
The poor tribal village people who don't know about these strategies developed by real estate companies get betrayed due to their fake advertisements and government approvals. Due to these all kinds of influences, the poor farmers lost all of their savings and they had to face many awful situations. In other scenarios, corporate manufacturers of earthmovers promote their products and influence farmers to buy those products for labour-less agriculture. So farmers are forced to buy a tractor by selling off all their livestock.
Here, another private sector is entering in the name of small, micro-financial agencies. These financial agencies offered loans to buy tractors and other products for agriculture. Most of the time, farmers aren't able to gain profit from farming due to drastic climate change and enough rain. Another observation is, all these financial agencies have only monthly repayment options as they practice globally. Expecting EMI (every monthly instalment) from a salaried person is very logical, who can make it easy from their monthly salary. It is very difficult for a farmer to make a monthly income as most of their crops or any other agricultural products will get returns for at least after 3 months, so forcing EMI from farmers is illogical. Because of all these factors, farmers were not able to pay their on a monthly basis for their loans and were pushed to an intolerant shame and some of them ended up in suicidal decisions.
Harvest festivals are common and celebrated by farmers around the world. In Tamil Nadu state (India) farmer's important harvest festival is called “Pongal” and they are celebrated for four days in the January 2nd week every year. This is mainly Thanksgiving to Nature (Sun), Cattle, trees, and farming equipment. A separate day is celebrated for cattle and it is known as “Maattu Pongal”. But nowadays, technology has improved and many farmers are buying tractors and other equipment as replacements for cattle. The interesting observation is, most farmers keep a small figurine of the cow head on the tractor bonnet. This is pure gratitude towards their cattle as they worship like gods. Even though it is a fictional story. It has most of the sequences are based on real incidents. Till today, farmers residing in South India are facing many financial scams due to their lack of awareness and illiteracy. Beyond all these, I have my own experiences as I was born and lived on small remote farmland until my schooling. Till today I am connected with my native people and keep observing the changes in their lifestyle.
Kalvarayan hills.