Ho Gayi Hai Pir Parvat Si: The Mountains Agonized

"Ho Gayi Hai Pir Parvat Si: The Mountains Agonized"

In Hindi/English, with subtitles and narration in English
111 minutes . India . 2019

Of late, the Mighty Himalayas in India has been reduced to a huge construction site in order to satiate the neo-liberal greed. In the state of Himachal Pradesh alone, more than 900 hydropower projects are coming up, to generate 27,000 megawatts of electricity. Natural flows of life-sustaining rivers are being ruthlessly altered and the mountains are being defaced beyond recognition, while scores of communities are being thrown into uncertain futures. Several hundreds of massive tunnels are already being carved through the mountains into which rivers disappear, and the muck generated is being dumped randomly, which is eating into people’s space, commons, livelihoods. Excessive underground activities are causing landslides and flash floods on a landscape that falls under Seismic Zone IV and V. Environmental norms are being brazenly violated by the state; and people’s democratic dissent is being repressed using police forces.

Between 2010 and 2017, as the film travels from one district to another, from one project area to another, it captures how an ensuing colossal disaster is slowly taking in to its grip age-old social, cultural, ecological, and economic security systems of the mountain folks. On face of repression where even legal recourse does not help, what would the people do then?

The Nature, of course, speaks for itself, and pits its own argument.