Cotton growing was a political tool that took the nation towards freedom from the colonisers and from external market forces. Wardha was to be a model village where handspun, hardy desi cotton was to inspire freedom, dignity and economic standing for the farmer, weaver and householder.
Today, Wardha stands as the vestige of industrialisation and a victim of corporate farming. The chemical-intensive Bt cotton monoculture has spread through india– harming health, deepening debt, irreversibly eroding indigenous knowledge, and sowing the seeds of a climate crisis. Unable to cope with the changing market economy, government apathy, drought, poor irrigation, crop failure, increased cost of cultivation- Wardha continues to be the capital of farmers’ suicides. In honouring the ghosts of the land can we see the last few threads tying the people to the soil?
2017- ongoing