RAMU RAU’S THE MARKET A THOUGHTFUL EXAMINATION ON HUMAN LIFE

Rama Rau’s The Market explores the grisly kidney trade in India, through a thoughtful examination of the trials and tribulations faced by donors and transplant patients. Rau apposes two grave and yet equally tenable circumstances in this bioethical story of a struggle to preserve one’s livelihood.

The hour-long documentary opens up with a dismal score, casting its harsh glare over dire kidney transplant statistics. In Canada alone, a person dies every three days waiting for a kidney. It’s this uncertainty of death that compels people to seek out other measures of securing the vital organ. And in a world that is driven by a free market, where there are people who are willing and able to offer what one so desperately needs, why not put a price on a kidney?

For starters, it’s wrong. But this simplistic and dismissive view is all too easy to offer from outside the margins of the issue. The Market seeks to offer a glimpse inside the life of Hema, a young mother of two who has run out of choices. With the help her sister, a kidney broker and donor, she sets out to sell her kidney for just enough money to pay off her debts.

Following the tsunami–that hit regions surrounding the Indian Ocean on Boxing Day in 2004–many bottom-caste families that were previously reliant on income from their fishermen patriarchs, found themselves in insurmountable debt. Selling one’s kidney, despite being a band-aid solution, seems to be the only answer for inhabitants of Chennai–an Indian slum nicknamed “Kidney Village.”

The kidney trade is illegal for obvious ethical reasons. Offering a kidney for what one doctor in the film terms “financial consideration” is a risky business that could have negative repercussions for the donor–namely, death, imprisonment, or in many cases chronic debilitating pain. Furthermore there is no government protection for these donors, who perjure themselves multiple times during the bureaucratic donor process.

Hema’s sister believes that as a kidney broker she is offering “the gift of life.” But there is a cold quality in her negotiations that can only come from an emotional distancing from the harsh reality of the donor situation. “Look at the quality of the product,” she says while speaking to a hospital administrator. “Don’t look at the money.” The broker, while speaking to the camera, says that the actual “deal” of selling an organ is between the doctor and the transplant patient. The donors are left out of the negotiations because “in this business the doctors make all the money.” An awful truth since the average selling price for a kidney is sixty thousand dollars; the donor is lucky if they get three per cent of that.

The other side of this story is equally bleak. Worlds away in Nanaimo, British Columbia, Sandra, a forty year old single mother with failing kidneys prepares her dialysis with an air of ritualism. She’s been on the transplant list for five years now with no end to her suffering in sight. Her family, anxious that her health will further deteriorate, pressures her to seek a more immediate remedy for her chronic illness. But the only available alternative is an unsettling solution that Sandra wonders if she could ever live with.

Organ donation for profit at first glance seems like a win-win situation, but in reality it only tips the balance of fate. As the documentary flips between the two settings–a garbage strewn slum and a comparatively antiseptic green expanse–it is clear that this inherent dilemma of choice is one both Hema and Sandra live with. The Market does not attempt to judge its subjects; instead the aim is to educate individuals about this bioethical issue. Rau avoids trapping her documentary in the confines of an overarching narrative by focusing her story on the two principals effected by the illegal trade: the donor and the transplant seeking patient. A successful device that would make any person question what they would do in either Hema or Sandra’s undesirable position.

Canadian Broadcast Premiere on: TVO Wed, December 7 at 9pm & midnight, repeating Sun, December 11 at 11pm

- Safa Jinje