The Hindu : Andhra Pradesh News : Free from slavery but far from promised land

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Jun 10, 2004

Andhra Pradesh

Andhra Pradesh

Free from slavery but far from promised land

By K. Venkateshwarlu

Balakishtaiah showing the document sanctioning him two acres of land. Photo: Mohd. Yousuf

HYDERABAD, JUNE 9. When he was released after a four-year stint as bonded labour "hired" by a landlord for a paltry Rs. 4000, Pedda Medari Balakishtaiah, a Dalit, way back in 1994, there were promises galore. The rehabilitation package offered for his livelihood included a bullock cart, Rs. 500 and a two-acre Government land behind Yatam Cheruvu, in his native Kanmankalva village in Kulakacherla mandal of Ranga Reddy district.

A decade later, Balakishtaiah rues his freedom from bondage. It proved to be a short-lived dream as the assignment patta for the two- acre site still eludes him, though he got the bullock cart and Rs.500. "For 10 years now, I might have submitted over hundred petitions from the Chief Minister down to the Mandal Revenue Officer but I am yet to get the promised piece of land. How can I survive with the meagre income I get running the bullock cart? I have four children, two of them daughters of marriageable age. Sometimes I wonder why I was liberated, for all these years I struggled to feed my family."

Armed with a sheaf of papers and petitions, he was in the city on Wednesday, hoping to see the Chief Minister, Y. S. Rajasekhara Reddy. " I thought he will do justice to me. But the staff at his house told me that he had gone to Delhi. I had met him last year (when he was Leader of Opposition) on August 20, and he was kind enough to write to the Ranga Reddy District Collector, R. P. Meena, asking him to expedite the matter."

Meeting political leaders and officials was a weekly routine for him for all these years. "I have seen two Chief Ministers, half a dozen Ministers and MLAs, six District Collectors and 12 MROs. All I got was assurances and endorsements but not the land. I am hopeful now, with the return of Congress Government."

Balakishtaiah was given in bondage to a landlord in 1990 for Rs. 4,000 for six years. "We were passing through difficult times. We were six in the family and my father was unable to make ends meet. The measly earnings he got from shifting of cattle dung from one farm to another were hardly sufficient and I was sent out as bonded labour. For four years I slogged in the farm besides doing errands". An NGO with the help of authorities rescued him under the Bonded Labour Abolition Act of 1975, after he served for four years.

He was freed from the clutches of the landlord but life for him was difficult with virtually no support system in place. With cases booked against the landlord and the patwari, both of them kept threatening him till the cases were withdrawn under political pressure. "They once warned me that they would finish me. They even pitted other Dalits against me, encouraging them to claim the two-acre land. I survived but I need some thing to sustain my family."

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