When big people in New Delhi and Mumbai are busy findingways to reform the economy and return to high-growth days, they can’t bebothered to find out what small people in godforsaken places are up to. They donot know, for example, that:
- In Bajkacha and Dukaria villages of Katni district in MadhyaPradesh, villagers have placed wood logs on the fringes of the villages to burnhundreds of funeral pyres at a short notice. They have threatened massself-immolation if they are coerced into giving up their claim over 1,200 acresof land which they allege land sharks in connivance with a downright corruptadministration want to usurp from them.
- In Chengara village of Patnamthitta district in Kerala,landless labourers have been demanding land to live and labour on. Now theyhave readied hundreds of nooses hanging from trees and have threatened tocommit mass suicide.
- In Punjab, the landless dalit women don’t want BPL or anyother cards. Instead, they want a ‘land card’ to enable them to go and relievethemselves somewhere “ since landowners don’t allow them to use their land foropen defecation.
These villagers, farmers and labourers know their voice willnot reach the places where their destinies are shaped. So they are coming toNew Delhi “ by foot.
Leading this march is 64-year-old Rajagopal PV, Rajaji as heis more commonly known, who has been an activist for the landless for more thanthree decades now.
Rajagopal undertook an 80,000-km journey, from Kanyakumari,beginning on October 2 last year and ending in the last week of this September.He met countless farmers and labourers and came to know about desperatemeasures, like the ones mentioned above, they were resorting to “ only to livea life a dignity.
Rajagopal, president and founding member of Ekta Parishad,an umbrella group of different mass movements on land policy, wrote severalletters to the prime minister, drawing his attention to the problems of thelandless farmers across the country.
When he got a feeling that the government was stone deaf tothe plight of landless farmers, he decided to bring them to the nationalcapital and ask the government to hear them out. As many as 50,000 people startedout walking from Gwalior on October 2. By the time they reach New Delhi onOctober 28, their number is expected to cross 1,00,000.
The rumble of the tens of thousands of pairs of feetmarching in absolute silence and with a resolute spirit can be disturbing forany government. The very announcement of the long march on foot had jolted thegovernment into action.
On September 25, Rajaji met Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh,who assured him of the government’s help in resolving the matter. For the nextthree days, the Ekta Parishad team and the government met and discussed thefine print of an agreement in Delhi. In almost all the meetings, ruraldevelopment minister Jairam Ramesh was present. On September 29, the governmentcame out with the final draft of an agreement.
“As the agreement went for publication, Ramesh called me onSeptember 29 and said that he could not sign the document because of pressurefrom the top. That was a blow to us. Yet, we gave the government another twodays’ time. Nothing came from their side,” Rajagopal discloses in Morena,Madhya Pradesh, at the end of a tiring daylong march on October 6. According tohim, the pressure from the top must be from the prime minister’s office (PMO).
There was only one course left for the farmers now. Rajajilanded in Gwalior on October 2 to address a rally already announced for theday. “Actually, the draft agreement was to be presented in Gwalior before acrowd of 50,000 landless people already assembled from different parts ofIndia,” says Rajagopal.
Ramesh and minister of state for commerce JyotiradityaScindia also came to Gwalior on October 2 to address the crowd and urge them tocall off the march. Ramesh famously told the gathering, “Go home…we will findthe middle path.” But the Buddha was far from smiling on him.
As soon as the ministers left the scene, a mahapanchayat of50,000 farmers was convened to discuss the ministers’ promise and decide on thefuture course of action. The decision was unanimous. A jan satyagraha was tobegin on the very day in the form of a silent march to Delhi. “We gave fiveyears (from 2007 when Rajaji took his struggle for the landless to the nationallevel) to the government but nothing concrete came out. There was nothing leftexcept to start the yatra,” he says.
Ever since, streams of people with Ekta Parishad’sgreen-and-white flag have been continuously walking on one side of the nationalhighway 3 in neat rows.
