Made in China

Recently I saw an interesting new Marathi movie titled "Made in China". It is well made and has an interesting story line. Here is a brief review.

In line with the string of good Marathi movies that have come out in the last few months, starting from "Saade Maade Teen" and "Valu", here is one more thought provoking and highly realistic movie "Made in China". The title is a bit confusing and does not give an idea of what it is all about, untill you see it.

The movie is about the current topic of SEZs and its repurcussions on the surrounding society. Several thousand acres of prime fertile land has been earmarked for a proposed SEZ in Western Maharashtra and the news spreads like wildfire in this rustic setting. There are prosperous farmers like the nephew of the politician (who has mooted the idea of the SEZ) and there are marginal farmers whose daily bread is dependent upon what they sell daily.
The nephew who is truely in love with mother earth and is a true farmer, finds common cause with an upcoming politician, who is the rival of his uncle. But by and large they fight the battle parallelly on their own, due to the lack of confidence in each other.

The uncle politician portrays the typical politician of today who goes back on his words as per his convenience. The man who had encouraged his nephew to go to Israel to learn modern farming techniques and then implement the same in their ancentral land, is now saying that SEZ is the best way for fast development and that all the prime land needs to be sacrificed for it. This example has vivid similarities with a recent case of controversial SEZ near Mumbai, where the then CM was said to have a stake.

All the characters have done good justice to their roles, including the uncle politician, his son (mostly interested in collecting weapons and having fun), the son's wife, his daughter (who is foreign educated and has political ambitions), his farmer nephew, the rival upcoming politician and the nosy PA of the uncle.

The quiet charm of rural Maharashtra is beautifully shown with rollling hills, winding roads, extensive farms, bullock carts, pick-up vans, new green houses and the twittering of birds in the background like lapwing and bulbul.

Here is one new Marathi movie that shows the start reality of today's politics, where the larger good of the community is conveniently side-stepped, for personal gains. The larger problem of India losing its farmland to non-farm uses also is very real. The farmer nephew rightly puts it, "We are not against development, but we are against unsustainable development". Happy viewing.
-- Atul Sathe (atulsathe@yahoo.com )