Landless – Dir Randeep Maddoke (Dir. 2018, Punjabi with English subtitles)

the of the farmer’s movement against the Indian is to be considered as an example of people power in principle and action, then the importance of the coalition of farm labourers, workers and landowners has to be recog-nised. When the kisan morcha began in November 2020, a dismissive attitude towards it highlighted the male, dominant caste leadership and questioned the possibility of a progressive politics coming out of this subject position. However, through the process of the long struggle, every issue that faces North Indian society came to the fore and the question of caste and the position of those who have no access to land, let alone the dream of ownership, was continuously highlighted from within and outside the movement. It is in that context, that the film Landless by Randeep Maddoke needs to be viewed. This is not only because Randeep himself spent a year at the Delhi borders, participating as an activist-photographer/filmmaker, but this brilliant documentary forefronts those who are at the absolute bottom of the rural labour hierarchy – landless, daily-wage earning, women. This film is an unrelentless and incisive insight into the lives of Dalit labour, predomi-nantly women, daily wage workers. They are at the bottom of the economic hierarchy, their bodies gnarled and hardened, by the harsh, rugged working conditions in which they labour. Perhaps the most powerful segment of the film juxtaposes a tractor fair in which a group of singers are entertaining the wealthy landowners, who are looking to buy farm machinery. The lewd lyrics of the singers are sequenced with the case of a young Dalit woman who is raped by Jat -boys on her way back from school. The abuse by dominant caste men and the trap of economic necessity sets the context of patriarchal exploitation, a brutal system laid bare by Maddoke’s aesthetic framing. The film takes the viewer deep into rural life, with the use of still shots that stay in the frame for what seems a long time, creating an intimacy that is shaken by the violence and hardship of the lives presented.