Suicide live broadcast: What capital do we have to laugh at India?

This is the third Indian movie I watched recently. What’s interesting is that these three movies are all related to Amir Khan. Both "Three Idiots" and "Stars on Earth" were performed by Amir Khan, the latter It was he directed, and this "Suicide Live Broadcast" was produced by him. The background of the first two films is the city. It is an India that is different from our impression, clean, modern and full of urban sense, and at the same time closely following the trends of the world; India in this film is the same as ours. The expected India is the same. Its background is rural, backward and poor. Modern India shocks us and feels unbelievable; while poor India makes us breathe a sigh of relief, thinking that India is nothing but this. In fact, what these three movies reflect is the real India, an India with multiple perspectives, after all, this is a country with a population of more than one billion. It is not surprising that modernity coexists with poverty.

However, the point of the movie is not here. Perhaps as a film maker, he just wanted to truly and profoundly express the reality of India, the poverty in the countryside, the misery of peasants' lives, the politicians' shows and the boredom of the media, this is what the director wants to remind. However, as a citizen of a country that is adjacent to it but with a subtle heart, what I pay attention to when watching this film is that in addition to the poverty of Indian farmers, it is more of the domestic India shown in the film. Politics, this is a very different politics from ours. We used to know it only through the news, but now through a movie, the whole process is vividly shown before our eyes.

"Suicide Live Broadcast" tells a ridiculous and true story about a farmer who wants to commit suicide due to bankruptcy and win compensation. This kind of thing is actually not uncommon. It may happen in many countries in the world, including China. Every year, many farmers commit suicide because they cannot bear the pressure of life. Its absurdity is that so many suicides have not been paid attention to, and a suicide that has not occurred beforehand has caused a national sensation and has led to a series of political incidents. This is not because the suicide of the farmer is very important, but because the timing of his suicide is very delicate. It was at the time of the general election in India that the media's attention continued to ferment the incident, triggering various political forces to compete.

Speaking of Indian politics, the Chinese people always have a condescending sense of pride. They think that India’s political situation is chaotic and disorderly. They compare India with China, regard India as a failure of the democratic system, and are complacent that China has not adopted such a policy. The Indian system is therefore a success. Specific to this movie, some people said in film reviews that India’s democracy is a joke.

Is democracy in India really a joke? I am afraid that apart from the Chinese, not many people in the world dare to look at it this way. This is a democratic government with a large population in the world. The democratic system has been in force for 60 to 70 years since the time of independence. Due to economic, cultural, religious and other factors, in the process of democratization in India, although it has gone very hard, it is also very solid. Although there have been many twists and turns, there has been excessive political disorder. With the gradual maturity of the democratic system, India's domestic politics has become more and more stable, and the economy has developed faster and faster. Compared with China in the past few decades, India has made fewer detours and social turbulence has been much less.

Although the "Suicide Live Broadcast" has a ridiculous attitude towards Indian politics, the form of Indian democracy reflected in the movie is enough to surprise us. A farmer who threatened suicide can make such a big noise in India, can change the entire political ecology and the direction of the general election, and can arouse the continuous attention of the entire Indian media and people. It can only be said that a society that can tolerate this situation is a pluralistic society. In a totalitarian and authoritarian society, this is unthinkable. We can blame those politicians for their show, but this kind of show focusing on the underprivileged and the livelihood of the people at the bottom is better than being insensitive and contemptuous of ordinary life. We can also disagree with the media's turmoil and hype, but this kind of openness to information and tolerance of speech is better than the practice of keeping the media uniform and making the whole society silent.

Of course, India’s democracy is not perfect, especially when compared with the mature democratic systems in Europe and the United States. In many cases, it is still in a naive period, and there is still a lot of room for improvement, as this movie shows. However, at least in such a political system, there is already a diversified color. All kinds of propositions have their own channels of expression. All kinds of interests can be responded to in the entire society, no matter how small the political opinion is. Groups have room for their own activities. In such a society, the seeming chaos on the surface, in fact, they all do their own things within the scope permitted by the law. We saw scenes of fighting each other in Taiwan’s Legislative Council on TV. We always laughed and said that this is the political chaos in Taiwan and that this is the result of democracy. In fact, people who are able to see such scenes of fighting for political opinions in the media are in contrast to those people who can only see scenes of harmony.

To borrow a sentence from Kennedy: "Freedom has many difficulties, and democracy is not perfect." This is especially true for democracy in India. But at least in a society like India, you can express your opinions, and there are always people listening to your opinions. The society is not single but plural. People don’t need to take drastic forms to express their demands. The media is always timely. No one dared to silence others, and various interest groups were able to achieve a balance in the chaotic interaction. Look at our society where there is lava surging under our feet. I don't know how much peace is going to be?

Make a serious comparison between China and India to see how much courage we still have to laugh at India and to laugh at India’s democracy?

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