Globalising tech. Fine, when will we globalise humanity?

​Hyderabad: Death Certificate, the first tribal language movie in Kurmali from India in Kurmi is all set to get screened in International Film Festival of South Asia, in Toronto, Canada on May 20. According to Rajaditya Benerjee, actor, producer and theatre personality, the film portrays a strong statement against corruption, bureaucracy and human rights abuses faced by the people living on the fringes of India.

The story is about Savithri, wife of a water server in a small railway station in Eastern India. One day, her husband Ramlokhon doesn’t return home in the evening. The husband serves water to railway passengers in the station. Against this canvas, the film portrays how Savithri comes to terms with inhumane reality while looking for him in faraway places from her picturesque village surrounded by mountains and forests.

She along with her friends arrives at a railway station and they hear that someone has been run over by a train. But, she is still brooding with a lingering question in her mind: Where is he? Will she succeed in finding him? Further, the station master informs Savithri that in case the one run over by the train was her husband, then, she must obtain a death certificate. It was in answering these questions; the film rises whether death certificate was merely a document? We are globalising technology, when will we globalise humanity?

Directed in Jharkhand and West Bengal states, the film with its simple style vividly describes the ordeal and the pain of the people in the Kurmali language of Kurmi people. Recollecting what inspires him to come up with the film, Banerjee said that he was fascinated by his father Debasish Bandopadhyaya’s story, Death Certificate, which was on the marginalised society and also because not much work has been done on Kurmis.

It was this which had made him decide to highlight the issues of the lives of the Kurmis. While handling the story moving against a simple living Kurmi people, the film makes a strong statement against corruption, bureaucracy and human rights violations revolving around the helplessness of uneducated, tribal women.