MILES TO GO
English, 77 mins, 2003
Directed by Nina Subramani
Produced by Greenpeace

A 6000-km bus journey documents several industrial and environmental disaster zones in India

Screened as part of Vikalp: Films for Freedom organised by OPEN SPACE in Pune, July 31 - August 29, 2004

Subramani’s film rides a Greenpeace bus as dedicated activists travel the length and breadth of the country, visiting and documenting spots where environmental damage is at its worst. Given a lethargic bureaucracy, an indifferent government, a corrupt industrial structure and low levels of awareness all around, it is no surprise how many of these disaster zones there are in India . What is truly shocking is how people are allowed to live with and around these areas, carrying the unspeakable consequences of this neglect in their bodies.

The film opens with a celebration – music, dance, painting, singing, as the bus embarks on its 6000 km journey – but this joyful beginning belies where the bus will go and what this journey will show us. We see once sparkling rivers turned into poisonous sludge, fertile farmlands turned to toxic pits, children with deformities and diseases that ravage them from inside and out. And we see the poverty and degradation that accompanies callous and rapacious industrial expansion. The 6000 km trip tells us that these instances of criminal neglect are not few and far between, nor are they restricted to certain states and regions. They are, literally, everywhere, from Kanya Kumari to Assam .

The activists on the bus are not simply on a mission to document environmental disasters in the making, they are also determined to initiate change wherever they can. With all the weight of Greenpeace behind them, they meet pollution control board officers, reluctant industrialists and local activists, they organise rallies and demonstrations, they are surreptitiously led to the worst sites in the area in order to film and document. So along this journey, for all the horrors we see, we also share the exhilaration when a polluting plant is closed down. A small victory that encourages us all to believe that organised people’s power and persistence pays, not richly, but enough to make us want to stay in the struggle.

The bus also stops en route in Bhopal , to join the candlelit vigil on the anniversary of the world’s worst industrial disaster. This particular tragedy has become the rallying point for environmental activists the world over since its history embodies industrial neglect, corporate carelessness and state collusion. As we prepare for the 20th anniversary of the Union Carbide gas leak in Bhopal this December, we are reminded by the film that little has changed, that there are “a thousand Bhopals” waiting to happen. And another thousand already in process, happening slowly, steadily and inexorably.

As Subramani says towards the end of her film, when you see the human cost of industrial pollution, when you meet the victims of poisoned earth, land and air, you stop praying for those that died so needlessly for no fault of their own and pray instead, for the living.

For more information, contact: mail@elephantcorridor.org

InfoChange India News and Features, September 2004