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Story of betrayal: Mrinal Sen
Saasachi Bandop
A few years back a speech touched celebrated filmmaker Mrinal Sen to the core of his heart. The year was 1996 and H D Deve Gowda had been sworn in as Prime Minister. Underlining the tasks that he wished to undertake, Gowda said one of his top priorities was to provide safe drinking water to all the villages of India. ``Imagine, even today many of our villages don't have safe drinking water. It's appalling, it's unpardonable,'' fumes the septuagenarian film-maker.
According to him, the last 50 years after Independence have been wasted. ``It's a story of colossal betrayal of the people by their leaders. They make a host of promises before the elections and promptly forget everything once they get power. While the general population wallowed in abject poverty and illiteracy, the leaders enjoyed the spoils of power. The story was repeated every five years and now it recurs every two years,'' he laments.
In the first general election in 1952, Sen was a polling agent for the candidate of the undivided CommunistParty in Kanpur. ``Though I was never a card-holding member of the Communist Party, I had always some leftist leanings,'' he says with candour.
But he does not spare even the Communists for letting the people down. ``These days no political party, including the Communists, has any concrete ideology. You look at the manifestoes of different political parties. They are almost similar. And they have been like that during all the elections that took place in India so far,'' Sen says.
He regrets the all-round atmosphere of suspicion and hatred that pervades India today. ``Today things have come to such a pass that we have even forfeited the right to die a natural death. Hatred, suspicion and a complete lack of logic is the order of the day,'' he rues.
But like a true artiste, the film-maker has not given up hope. ``I am trying to imbibe an intense cynicism coupled with an intense passion for life. That's how I survive. The crisis will be over and better days will dawn soon,'' he says.
Copyright © 1999 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.
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This story was printed from Net Express located at http://www.expressindia.com. Net Express provides a portal to India, with news from The Indian Express and The Financial Express along with sites on travel and tourism, the entertainment industry, the power sector, the environment and much more.
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