Miyar House Analysis
"If the village perishes India will perish too. India will be no more India.”
- Mahatma Gandhi
By 2050, more than half of all Indians will live in urban areas, as per United Nation's World Urbanisation Prospects, a big shift from now, when just about one-third of the population does so. This would mean tens of millions migrating from the villages and into towns and cities each year, with profound impacts on every aspect of our life including the social, cultural, political, economic and ecological.
This phenomenon is not new – the mass urbanization and the gradual decline of the rural areas has been repeated, and studied extensively, all over the world over the last century.
For instance 6 million African-Americans moved out of the rural United States and into the cities starting 1910. Over a period of time this decimated the black population in the smaller …show more content…
And so, attempts like “Miyar House” (2011) are important. Written and made by film-maker Ramchandra PN, this documentary is his personal story, that covers the dismantling of his ancestral house in a remote village called Miyar (Karnataka, South India). Armed with just a digital camera, he and his friend Ajay Raina document not just the dismantling of the house but of the past itself. They also interview the other owners of the house and gather what the process of change and migration means to all of them.
According to Ramchandra, this sense of loss is something that they share with generations of rural Indians, but the house had to come down. Nostalgia here is mixed with practicality and an acceptance of inevitability. The story could have been of so many others but on a philosophical level it can be said to be the journey of a country that is propelling itself into
- Mahatma Gandhi
By 2050, more than half of all Indians will live in urban areas, as per United Nation's World Urbanisation Prospects, a big shift from now, when just about one-third of the population does so. This would mean tens of millions migrating from the villages and into towns and cities each year, with profound impacts on every aspect of our life including the social, cultural, political, economic and ecological.
This phenomenon is not new – the mass urbanization and the gradual decline of the rural areas has been repeated, and studied extensively, all over the world over the last century.
For instance 6 million African-Americans moved out of the rural United States and into the cities starting 1910. Over a period of time this decimated the black population in the smaller …show more content…
And so, attempts like “Miyar House” (2011) are important. Written and made by film-maker Ramchandra PN, this documentary is his personal story, that covers the dismantling of his ancestral house in a remote village called Miyar (Karnataka, South India). Armed with just a digital camera, he and his friend Ajay Raina document not just the dismantling of the house but of the past itself. They also interview the other owners of the house and gather what the process of change and migration means to all of them.
According to Ramchandra, this sense of loss is something that they share with generations of rural Indians, but the house had to come down. Nostalgia here is mixed with practicality and an acceptance of inevitability. The story could have been of so many others but on a philosophical level it can be said to be the journey of a country that is propelling itself into