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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Landless poor on long march to Delhi -Priscilla Jebaraj

Landless poor on long march to Delhi -Priscilla Jebaraj

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published Published on Oct 3, 2012   modified Modified on Oct 3, 2012
-The Hindu

Efforts of Jairam and Jyotiraditya to talk them out of it fail

Dhanalakshmi, a 22-year-old from the Paliyar hill tribe of Tamil Nadu, is a long way from home. At 7 a.m. on Wednesday, she will join about 60,000 other landless poor, Adivasis and Dalits who have streamed into Gwalior from all parts of the country for a padayatra to the national capital, to present the demand that each of them deserves his/her own piece of land to call home.

On Tuesday, Rural Development Minister Jairam Ramesh and Minister of State for Commerce Jyotiraditya Scindia flew to Gwalior in a last-ditch effort to convince the organisers — a land reform people’s movement called Ekta Parishad — to call off the march and accept the government’s promises that a draft National Land Reform Policy would be prepared within six months.

“Discussion is always a better option than agitation,” Mr. Ramesh tells the endless rows of squatting people. The multitude, which the organisers claim will swell to one lakh by the time the people reach Delhi on October 28, has the potential to dwarf last summer’s anti-corruption protests led by Anna Hazare.

“Go home … We will find the middle path,” says the Minister, enumerating the government’s existing measures to secure land and housing rights for the poor.

He had originally agreed to sign an agreement here, with time frames for initiatives such as a clear-cut policy, a land pool for the poor and fast-track land tribunals. However, two days ago, the Centre did a U-turn, refusing to sign. Since land is a state subject, Mr. Ramesh says, the Centre cannot impinge on the States’ domain and make promises that it cannot fulfil.

Dhanalakshmi won’t buy his argument. “We have already tried to fight for our rights in Tamil Nadu. But if we tell the Collector that we want our rights, he claims that there is no land, even though there is plenty of land for SEZs and industries. He says, you get an order from above. So we are going to Delhi to get an order from above,” she insists.

“Finding land may be the States’ job. But it is the Centre that sets policy for the States,” says Senthamizhselvi, an activist and organic farmer from Madurai. “If the Central government can set a policy to promote industry, and find 100 acres each for SEZs, they can set a policy to distribute land to the landless.”

Dhanalakshmi had never even been on a train until she squeezed into an unreserved compartment with 200 others from Tamil Nadu to make the long trip to Gwalior last weekend. But she is no stranger to the land rights struggle. Sitting amid a sea of green and white flags, with Hindi slogans rending the air and a posse of foreign documentary filmmakers roaming the vast pandal, she tells her story.

Driven into bonded labour on mango plantations after having been evicted from their forested mountain homes as a consequence of the Forest Conservation Act, a group of Paliyar tribals decided to take matters into their own hands in 2010. After two years of fruitless struggle to get title deeds as per their due under the Forest Rights Act of 2006, twenty-eight families went ahead and occupied a plot of land at Serakkadu at the foothills of the Bodi Agamalai, erecting small hutments. Despite threats by the Forest department …

The Hindu, 3 October, 2012, http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/landless-poor-on-long-march-to-delhi/article3959797.ece


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