| Lost land
A million mutinies
People
and land in India are under siege. Pandit ji investigates the complex
issue of land use and land ownership in what is still agricultural
India
Introduced
them to you in the last issue of Gobar Times. The key characters
in the play Find the winner — Jotdar Bheem, the landowner. Bargadar
Gopal, who worked for 20 years on Bheem's land for a share of the
crops produced, but now owns a plot himself. Barendra babu, the
government officer. And Mr Supariwala, the big industrialist. They
were squabbling over a piece of farmland, in Bangur, West Bengal,
remember? Here is what they were saying:
Barendra: Gopal, why are you making such a fuss? Bheem sold
a portion of his land to the government too. Now look at his spanking
new bike! He is a winner…
Bheem: I made little out of my 20 bighas, thanks to these
bargadars. They became too big for their boots after the government
launched Operation Barga (a land reform programme) in 1978, giving
those small farmers right to till my land, to share the crops!
Gopal (sobbing): Operation Barga helped me save, and I bought
six bighas with my sweat. Why does the government want to buy it
now?
Mr Supariwala: The government has sold your land to me. I
will build a factory here and give you a job. You will be a winner
too...
Gopal (still sobbing): But I lost my land…
I had left Gopal crying inconsolably over his piece of land, refusing
to be called a 'winner', spurning the lure of a bike or even a job
in Mr Supariwala's factory. I was confused. Is Gopal stubborn or
just a fool? Is he an exception, or are there some more like him?
So I went travelling across India. And I found many, many Gopals
— different names, different places, different conditions — but
each one of them was unmistakably a Gopal.
I found out more. That many of them are no longer sobbing in despair.
They are threatening to take up arms to protect their right over
their land, to fight it out with whoever tries to grab it — a government
officer like Barendra Babu, or a money and muscle flexing business
baron like Mr Supariwala.
The 72-year-old Janardan Mhatre, for instance, guards his three-acre
land in the coastal village of Pen in Raigarh district of Maharashtra
the same way as he would guard his granddaughter. Mhatre, who received
a state government notice with 2,090 fellow villagers to sell their
land to make way for Reliance Industries' Mahamumbai Special Economic
Zone (SEZ), is ready to die defending it.
Then there is Chaudhry Hariprakash in Jhajjar, Haryana; Haradhan
Parida in Jagatsinghpur, Orissa; Ayappan in Hossur, Karnataka. The
list goes on and on...
Social scientists say that during the past two decades, India has
witnessed at least 'a million mutinies'. In every region and state,
small and large people's movements have erupted to fight land grabbing
— by the government or by large national and international corporations.
Why are Indians ready to lay down their lives for their
land? The answer is simple. For more than 60 per cent of
the Indian population land is livelihood, security and, therefore,
survival.
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