A Sociological Review of Peepli Live 2010

• Main Author: Dr Shivam
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: ACCB Publishing 2015-04-01
• Series: Space and Culture, India
• Subjects: Marginalisation; farmers’ suicide; agriculture; caste; politics; India
• Online Access: http://www.spaceandculture.in/index.php/spaceandculture/article/view/120

Marginalisation is a process of distancing (either by coercion or voluntarily) from the centre and relegate to the margin. In the social context, this marginalisation is lack of importance to certain socially disadvantaged groups. This disadvantage might be due to caste, class, gender or lack of political opportunities. However, within the same society there are privileged groups who are at the centre of all importance. This difference between advantaged groups at the centre and disadvantaged (marginalised) groups at the periphery has been problematised in popular media like cinema. The present paper shows that how marginalised sections are portrayed in Hindi cinema? For this, the cases of Peepli Live released in 2010 have been selected. The paper has been divided into two parts. The first part deals with the farmer’s suicide and the second part with the politics of suicide and the politics of marginalisation. These issues have been taken keeping in mind the recent problems of the marginalised sections in society, especially the problems faced by the farmers in contemporary times. Various studies and news reports show that farmers’ suicides are post 1990s phenomena inflated by the undertaking of measures to open Indian economy by the methods of liberalisation, privatisation and globalisation (LPG). This was the phase, which witnessed incredible growth of the industrial sector as compared to the agricultural sector. These facts were enough to break the myth of ‘developing’ India. In fact, the increasing number of farmers’ suicide rather depicted government’s bias towards economic growth neglecting socio-economic concerns of the farmers. At this juncture of bias and neglect, one can identify a breeding ground for politics of suicide from farmers’ side and politics of marginalisation from the politicians’ side. Sociologically, however, a multiple socio-economic factors are theorised to be responsible.