Wealth Amidst Dust captures woes of unorganized labour - Video screening at Tathya Film Festival

March 18, 2010 - PRLog -- An estimated 6 Lakh people migrate from Orissa and Maharashtra to Andhra Pradesh as migrant labour to brick kilns. Wealth Amidst Dust gets close to these people and captures the exploitative working conditions- shelter, wages, working hours, health problems, and status of the children, women and adolescent girls. With little or no assets, skills or education, these migrant ends up losing even the meagre privileges of being in their own village and don’t belong to any land. Children, more often than not, drop out of school to accompany their parents, only to be sucked into the vortex of hard labour, and lack of opportunity, education, and a future.
Failure of monsoons and more so abject failure of state in providing them with support in source areas force them to migrate in semi bonded conditions. The direct impact of such circumstances contributes to immense suffering of children and women. Women in particular are deprived of safe shelter, protection against abuse and access to health and hygiene. The film attempts to capture oppressive nature of brick kiln operations which results in abuse and exploitation of woman and children, lack of enough food and various health hazards.  In particular adolescent girls are forced into work even during menstrual cycle as they are part of unit, which is exclusively designed to meet work requirements of brick making.
An estimated 30 million population are in interstate migration and 6 million constitute children and the film focuses on invisible nature of their existence in a foreign land where rule of law is far from their realms of existence.  The film brings out the hardships faced by citizens in their own country raising various acts and laws that come into conflict with illegal nature of kilns operation, which is parallel to any other unorganized work in the country. On one hand, if India’s claim to exclusive economic growth has hugely contributed to nation’s wealth, on the other side, it has created very difficult conditions for large number of unskilled labour and women in particular. Wealth amidst Dust is a contemporary commentary on failure of governance. The video has raised many public debates on implementation of acts such Inter State Migrant Workmen Act, Right to Education of Migrant children, human rights of working women in unorganized labour.
The video has been screened at Hyderabad International Film Festival (2007) and at various International and National workshops on human rights. After prolonged 18 months battles, the accused in case of rape and abuse of women in the film have been sentenced to 10 years imprisonment by Rangareddy District court.  There are around 1000 kilns in and around Hyderabad, which support Rs.50000 Crore construction industry, but it hardly alleviate suffering of the marginalised, poor, tribals and dalit communities from western Orissa.  Unfortunately even the Government of India did not recognize them under recently passed Building and Construction workers act, making film more relevant in understanding livelihoods of one of the most invisible working group. The film funded by ActionAid International is directed by Vishy.  
Vishy did films on fishing communities, positive people, dalits, corruption and education for various National and International agencies including Ministry of Rural Development. For more details- visit-www.vishyvideos.blogspot.com, www.viddler.com/explore/vishyteki

Event- Tathya Festival Date: 20th March 2010, Venue: Ravindra Bharati, Hyderabad, for details  contact Vishy at 9000403473