Cotton For My Shroud

‘Cotton for my shroud’ investigates the best kept secret in India: the ongoing genocide of farmers.

In the last 25 years, more than 3,00,000 Indian farmers have killed themselves according to official data. The Indian government and a pliable media happily call them suicides. These policy-driven deaths are a present-day genocide according to the definition followed by the United Nations.

Against this backdrop, the film follows some interesting characters in the Vidarbha region of Maharashtra – the cotton belt of India: an eccentric engineer who tabulates the suicides in Vidarbha, a young widow – whose husband poured kerosene and burnt himself to death – who does not know how much loan he took, a farmer whose brother committed suicide when his Bt. Cotton crop failed – yet wants to try Bt.Cotton for one more year…

The film questions the rationale behind allowing a free entry to multinational corporations like Monsanto, Bayer and Sygenta that slowly took over Indian agriculture. ‘The entry of Monsanto was patently illegal and the government is complicit’, thunders Dr PM Bhargava, the founder of Directorate of Biotechnology.

Slowly, our seed sovereignty and the nation’s food security were compromised. Dr Vandana Shiva provides an insight into what it means for our people.

With research, insight and courageous reporting from the killing fields of Vidarbha, the film gives us an intimate window into the lives of the dramatis personae.

Kavita and Nandan – two journalists trying to unravel the story- become the on-screen sutradhaars. They bear witness to the personal tragedies of citizens being reduced to mere numbers.

The film was conferred the National Film Award for ‘Best Investigative Film’ by the President of India in 2012. It was the Headline Film at the ‘World Investigative Film Week’ at London in 2013. 

It has been screened in farming communities, at important policy-making fora, and many universities worldwide.

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