The Hindu : Front Page : Janadesh rally resolves to fight for land rights

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Monday, Oct 29, 2007
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Janadesh rally resolves to fight for land rights

Staff Reporter

PHOTO: AP

RALLY OF THE POOR: Tribals, Dalits and villagers from 15 States march into Delhi on Sunday after covering 340 km. starting from Gwalior on October 2. The Janadesh March, organised by the Ekta Parishad, was to highlight the need for land reforms and demand rights to land and livelihood. About 25,000 participated in the protest.

NEW DELHI: Janadesh-2007, the march of nearly 25,000 landless tillers, labourers, Dalits and tribals, who have been deprived of their land rights, reached the Capital on Sunday with the resolve that they would not return unless the Government accepted their demands and came up with concrete plans.

Addressing the gathering at Ramlila Grounds here, Ekta Parishad president Raj Gopal warned that if the government does not talk to the landless people, it should begin “making arrangements for picking up the bodies of those who had participated in the march.”

“These people Buddhadebe tired and are suffering from malnutrition. If the government delays listening to our demands, I fear the number of martyrs would go up,” said Mr. Gopal, adding that there was little point in returning if they had to go back to the same old system.

The Ekta Parishad president said dispossession from land and displacement was not only a phenomenon limited to the tribals and the Dalits.

“Today village land in thousands of acres is being acquired in the name of special economic zones, small shopkeepers are being forced to close their business as corporate giants are entering the retail business. The government does not want the people to become self-reliant and is doing everything to ensure that we become dependent on ‘outsiders’ for everything.”

— Photo: Sushil Kumar Verma

Voice for a cause: CPI general secretary A.B. Bardhan (centre), Congress MP Jyotiraditya Scindia (right) and CPI leader Amarjeet Kaur at the ‘Janadesh Yatra’ in Delhi on Sunday.

He pointed out that all the landless people wanted were dignity and bread.

Some of the demands of Janadesh-2007 are establishment of a national land authority to provide a clear statement on land utilisation in the country, identify lands available for redistribution and regularise holdings of the poor and the marginal peasantry.

It has also demanded setting up of fast-track courts to settle past and present conflicts and disputes related to land.

Extending his support to the cause of the landless people, Communist Party of India general secretary A.B. Bardhan said his party as well as its other Left partners would take the battle of these people forward.

Congress MP Jyotiraditya Scindia also assured the gathering that the Congress and the Prime Minister were determined to find solutions to the problems of the poor and the landless people.

Noted Gandhian Nirmala Deshpande, social activist Swami Agnivesh, environmentalist Sunder Lal Bahuguna, Magsaysay Award winner Rajendra Singh and farmers’ leader from Madhya Pradesh Sunilam also lent their support to the cause.

Earlier in the day, the marchers, who had reached the outskirts of Delhi on Saturday night, marched through Nizamuddin to reach the Ramlila Grounds.

On October 2, a “jyoti” was taken from Rajghat to Gwalior from where the march began. Traversing through Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and Haryana, the marchers reached Delhi travelling a distance of more than 350 km on foot. They lost seven members on the way, three in an accident and four to exhaustion.

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