Land of Widows

Land of Widows a 21-minute Indian documentary film directed by Aarti Shrivastava. The film focuses on the unsustainable working conditions of mine workers in the state of Rajasthan, India. Set in the Bhilwara district of Rajasthan this film captures the exploitation the workers have to go through on a daily basis to work in illegal mines for a ‘dollar a day’. Blending investigative journalism with helplessness and dark humour, the film tells the stories of average sandstone miners victimized by corporate greed and political corruption. It examines how sandstone mining has affected the local communities and also people occupied with this occupation. Despite stone mining’s links to several occupational diseases such as psychoneurosis, silicosis, tuberculosis, asbestosis and asthma, abject poverty keeps driving villagers in many parts of the state to illegal mining. More than 70 men from 60 families have died in the last few years of silicosis caused by inhalation of dust containing free crystalline silica. Their men were all mine workers employed in illegal stone quarries that have mushroomed over the past 10 years across the state thanks to record demand for sandstone, marble and other stones as people across the country built homes, offices and malls.

Land of Widows
Directed by	Aarti Shrivastava
Produced by	Media for social Impact, Bhaumik Sampat, Abhishek Awasthi
Written by	Aarti Shrivastava
Music by	Daniel Arlington
Cinematography	Mayank Tripathi
Edited by	Pranav Patel
Release date	November 2011
Running time	21 minutes
Country	India
Language	English

The film is a hitchhiker’s journey through the labyrinthine universe of Democracy, as it exists in its lowest unit level – the Indian village. It showcases that death has lost its sting in parts of Rajasthan. Out there, they call it, not without a tinge of sarcasm, the land of widows. Penury is more horrible than death. They don’t want to see their children cry loud for a piece of bread. They are aware that mining will take their life one day, but poverty will take no time to take their children away from them.

This village, Sriji Ka Kheda[1] is representative of all neighboring villages and perhaps all mining villages in most parts of India. Welcome to rural India. Where all they can do is hope for a better tomorrow, where the only shine is the glistening of the tears in their eyes, where life is cheap and death – even cheaper! The stories of struggle and visions of hope open a door to the complex issue that is threatening the future of mine workers and their families.