21st June, 2008: Raipur (Chhattisgarh)
The Group Fast against the Black Law (in Chhattisgarh) and for the release of Dr.Binayak Sen, Ajay T G and others entered its 6th day with 47 members of Ekta Parishad (Kanker) led by Mr. Ratneshwar Nath joining in the 24-hours dharna/chain fasting, 9 members of Baiga Mahapanchayat (Lormi) led by Ms. Rashmi Diwedi, while 9 members from Chhattisgarh Mukti Morcha (Jamul) led by Adv Sudha Bhardwaj completed their 24-hours fasting today. Others who joined in support and solidarity were Dr. Anurag Bhargava of Jan Swastha Abhiyaan (Ganiyari, Bilaspur), Dr. Ilina Sen, Ms. Chandrika and Ms. Nazma (Roopantar), Arundhati, Sirish Agraal, Jontahan, Anurag Tiwari (Asha Parivaar, Lucknow), besides regular volunteers from Chhattisgarh Bal Shramik Sangathan, Asha Parivaar & PUCL.
From Ekta Parishad, those who spoke at the occasion were Ratneshwar Nath, Shivrani ji, Dashrath Markaam, Aagantu Ram, Sunder Markam, Bishu Pardi. Others who spoke expressing solidarity with the cause were Dr. Anurag Bhargava of Jan Swastha Abhiyaan, Adv Gautam Bandopadhyay, Nadi Ghati Morcha. Mukti songs were sung by Chandrika of Roopantar, and Kumud Nandgave, Ramesh Dewangan of Chhattisgarh Bal Shramik Sangathan.
"State Government Demonstrates
TOTAL INDIFFERENCE & APATHY TOWARDS
DEMOCRATIC & PECEFUL PROTEST"
- Dr. Sandeep Pandey (Activist on Fast for 10 Days)
While the morale of those fasting for the past six days (Dr. Sandeep Pandey, Com Prem Narain Verma, Ram Prakash & Faizal Khan) was very high and hopeful, the BJP Government in the State demonstrated its total indifference and apathy towards democratic & peaceful method of protesting through Fasting. Expressing concern at the growing ruthless character of the State, Dr. Sandeep Pandey (Magsaysay Award Winner) said that the failure of the state to listen to the voices of peaceful protest and respond to the people's cries are the major reasons for resorting to extra-parliamentary means by the victims of injustice and violence.
Dr. Sandeep Pandey also referred to an article entitled "Gandhi! Tum Nikal Bhago Chadm Gandhivadiyon ke beech se" (Gandhi! You must escape from the midst of pseudo- Gandhians!) by Sri Vishwaranjan, Director General of Police of Chhattisgarh appearing inthe Hari Bhoomi daily published from Raipur, the capital city of Chhattisgarh. In this article, the DGP has poked fun at the Group Fasting and those participating in it.
He has also categorized Dr. Sandeep Pandey (a known Gandhian Social Worker given the prestigious Magsaysay Award who has led a very courageous people's struggle by peasants and women in Uttar Pradesh against Coca Cola, one of the Multinational Giants), Adv Kanak Tiwari (Senior Advocate, a Gandhian intellectual), and Himanshu (a Gandhian Social Worker of Vanvasi Chetna Ashram working among Tribals in Dantewara for the past three decades) as Pseudo-Gandhians. And, of course, he also drags into his "categorization as pseudo-Gandhians" all those who are opposed to "Salwa Judum" (a state sponsored militant movement arming citizens to combat naxalism), which is presently being investigated by the NHRC at the direction of the Supreme Court of India in a Writ Petition filed by Prof. Nandini Sunder & Others, who were part of Independent Citizens Initiative Team to study the uprooting and displacement of about 70,000 tribals from their land and villages due to Salwa Judum.
The timing of this article's publication authored by the DGP of the State itself reflects the BJP Government's attitude of targeting and branding all those voices of dissent that do no toe the official line, be they human rights defenders, progressive intellectuals, Gandhian workers, doctors, journalists, lawyers and social activists and organizations committed to preserving and promoting the fundamental rights of the citizens. According to the PUCL, while it should be left to all those targeted by the DGP to respond individually to the vilification campaign against them, it is not lost on all those who have been following the BJP Government's attempt at "targeting" and "branding" of the human rights defenders and rights-based organizations with an ulterior motive to silence their voices of dissent and democracy.
DISTRICT ADMINISTRATION DUMPING GARBAGE NEAR THE VENUE OF GROUP FASTING
In a statement issued today, PUCL has also strongly condemned the District Administration's insensitivity in locating the fasting and protesting groups and individuals in Burha Talab at Raipur, which is also the dumping ground for garbage and dust collected from the capital city by contractors and civil administration. In spite of repeated requests, the Raipur Municipal Corporation has failed to clear the vicinity from such foul-smelling garbage that is the breeding ground for mosquitoes and more likely cause for epidemics like cholera and gastroenteritis. The PUCL and other participating organisations are deciding to make this an issue, and get the ground cleared for al times. According to the PUCL, the scant regard for the democratic and peaceful protest demonstrates BJP Government's authoritarian tendencies.
The PUCL has also expressed concern that the District Administration has not yet conducted any medical check-up on the fasting individuals. It has also not provided any protection to the protestors although written information has been provided to the District Administration about the Group Fasting.
Rajendra K Sail
President, PUCL (CG)
Mobile: 094242-01288
Saturday, June 28, 2008
Association for India's Development
Houston, TX: Many concerned Indians in the USA joined a global fast by hundreds of activists in Raipur, Chhattisgarh as well as in other parts of India and the world, demanding the annulment of the draconian Chhattisgarh Special Public Security Act 2005, and the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (1967) amended in 2004 and the release of Dr Binayak Sen (medical doctor and recipient of the prestigious Jonathan Mann award for Health and Human Rights), Ajay T. G. (independent film-maker) and many other activists belonging to the People's Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL), detained under the above acts.
Rashim Singh, a PhD student at University of Houston, USA, a volunteer and an Executive Board member of Association for India's Development (AID) is on the 8th day of her 10-day fast, which started on June 16th 2005. Along with her several other NRIs are also fasting in solidarity, from 1 to 4 days.
Speaking on the incarceration of Dr Binayak Sen, Rashim Singh says, "A man who for 30 years has dedicated his life to the service of the poor cannot be branded as a threat to the country". On being asked what made her undertake the 10 day fast, she said, "If Gandhiji could have successfully used satyagraha to make the British listen to us, then we expect our own government in Chhattisgarh and Delhi to listen to the voices of thousands of Indian citizens from all over the world demanding the abrogation of the draconian laws. If every voice raised against the government atrocities are curbed, then what is the use of a democracy?"
AID Houston volunteers Anand Chandolu and Shekhar Gosavi who were with Rashim when she began her fast said: "We must do more to raise awareness about this cause. We pray for the people in India and USA, from various groups such as Chattisgarh Mukti Morcha, Asha Parivar, National Alliance of People's Movement, AID that are fasting for the release of Dr Binayak Sen, a noted doctor and human rights activist working with PUCL."
Those fasting in Raipur, India include Dr. Sandeep Pandey (Magsaysay Award Winner & Social Worker), Prem Narain Verma (Chhattisgarh Mukti Morcha), Prem Prakash & Faizal (from Asha Parivar) and several other activists from various organizations in India.
Other AID volunteers that are fasting include:
· Rajeshwar Ojha, Delhi for 5 days
· Mohan Bhagat, College Park, MD for 3 days
· Srinadh Madhavapeddi, Dallas, TX for 2 days
· Pallavi Shrivastava, Tempe, AZ for 2 days
· Srinivas Krovvidy, Reston, VA for 1 day
· Vijay Manghnani, Philadelphia for 1 day
· Lakshmi Gorrepati, Baltimore, Maryland for 1 day
· Srinivas Naga Chadaram, Durham, NC for 1 day
· Rupalatha Maddala, Durham, NC for 1 day
· Subhrajit Bhattacharya, Philadelphia, PA for 2 days
· Nirveek Bhattacharjee, Seattle, WA for 2 days
· Somu Kumar, McLean, VA for 4 days
· Arun Gopalan College Park, MD for 1 day
· Neela Yennawar, State College, PA for 3 days
· Karthik Ranganathan, Dallas, TX for 2 days
· Chetana Kulkarni, Dallas, TX for 2 days
· Nitin Paradkar, Dallas, TX for 4 days
· Somnath Mukherji, Boston, MA for 1 day
· Dushyant Sethi, College Park, MD for 1 day
Complete list of people who are on hunger strike is at
http://www.ashaparivar.org/petition/binayaksen/index.php
Dr. Binayak Sen's case represents an alarming trend where human rights defenders that oppose state repression, including extra-judicial killings, are being held under draconian laws such the CSPSA (Chhattisgarh Special Public Security Act) and the UAPA (Unlawful Activities Prevention Act). Ajay T.G, an independent film maker and social activist from Chhattisgarh; Lachit Bordoloi, a human rights activist from Assam; Prashant Rahi, journalist from Uttarakhand; Govindan Kutty, editor of People's March in Kerala; Praful Jha, a journalist from Chhattisgarh; Vernon Gonsalves, an activist from Nasik; Arun Ferreira, Ashok Reddy, Dhanendra Bhurule, Naresh Bansode, activists from Vidarbha, have all been charged under the UAPA and kept under prolonged detention without bail. These draconian laws sanction the violation of due process by the state, and thus contravene internationally accepted norms of jurisprudence as well as democratic governance. As Mr.Kannabiran, National President of PUCL, India, argues in his letter to the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), the CSPSA and UAPA operate by criminalizing the very performance of civil liberties activities, and culpability is decided upon not by direct proof, but through guilt by association. This is the context in which many activists are questioning the charges of sedition brought against Dr.Sen - for example, Ms. Shalini Gera, an activist from Friends of South Asia, points out that the "evidence" presented by the state about Dr.Sen's "Maoist connections" actually refers to Binayak Sen's meetings with Narayan Sanyal, (a jailed 70-year-old Maoist leader) that took place with the permission of the jail authorities, and under their close supervision, when Dr. Sen, as the vice-president of the People's Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL), visited Sanyal in the Raipur Central Jail to provide medical and legal assistance.
As the State Secretary of PUCL of Chhattisgarh, and the national Vice President, Dr.Sen has been amongst the most vocal opponents of "Salwa Judum", a private militia movement armed by the Chhattisgarh Government to combat Maoist insurgency. Dr.Sen earned the ire of the government for opposing Salwa Judum which has itself contributed to a spiraling increase in violence and displacement of thousands of tribals. The permanent state of war created by Salwa Judum has led to large-scale and apparently voluntary displacement of indigenous communities, thus freeing up for corporate and industrial use, land and natural resources that have historically belonged to local communities.
According to Mr. Somnath Mukherji, an activist from the Association for India's Development, "these protests are not only about the violation of the human rights of Dr. Sen- they are also about the ongoing assault on the human rights of the people of Chhattisgarh whose lives and lands are being mortgaged to a vision of development that is antithetical to them".
For more information go to www.aidboston.org/FreeBinayakSen/
Rashim Singh, a PhD student at University of Houston, USA, a volunteer and an Executive Board member of Association for India's Development (AID) is on the 8th day of her 10-day fast, which started on June 16th 2005. Along with her several other NRIs are also fasting in solidarity, from 1 to 4 days.
Speaking on the incarceration of Dr Binayak Sen, Rashim Singh says, "A man who for 30 years has dedicated his life to the service of the poor cannot be branded as a threat to the country". On being asked what made her undertake the 10 day fast, she said, "If Gandhiji could have successfully used satyagraha to make the British listen to us, then we expect our own government in Chhattisgarh and Delhi to listen to the voices of thousands of Indian citizens from all over the world demanding the abrogation of the draconian laws. If every voice raised against the government atrocities are curbed, then what is the use of a democracy?"
AID Houston volunteers Anand Chandolu and Shekhar Gosavi who were with Rashim when she began her fast said: "We must do more to raise awareness about this cause. We pray for the people in India and USA, from various groups such as Chattisgarh Mukti Morcha, Asha Parivar, National Alliance of People's Movement, AID that are fasting for the release of Dr Binayak Sen, a noted doctor and human rights activist working with PUCL."
Those fasting in Raipur, India include Dr. Sandeep Pandey (Magsaysay Award Winner & Social Worker), Prem Narain Verma (Chhattisgarh Mukti Morcha), Prem Prakash & Faizal (from Asha Parivar) and several other activists from various organizations in India.
Other AID volunteers that are fasting include:
· Rajeshwar Ojha, Delhi for 5 days
· Mohan Bhagat, College Park, MD for 3 days
· Srinadh Madhavapeddi, Dallas, TX for 2 days
· Pallavi Shrivastava, Tempe, AZ for 2 days
· Srinivas Krovvidy, Reston, VA for 1 day
· Vijay Manghnani, Philadelphia for 1 day
· Lakshmi Gorrepati, Baltimore, Maryland for 1 day
· Srinivas Naga Chadaram, Durham, NC for 1 day
· Rupalatha Maddala, Durham, NC for 1 day
· Subhrajit Bhattacharya, Philadelphia, PA for 2 days
· Nirveek Bhattacharjee, Seattle, WA for 2 days
· Somu Kumar, McLean, VA for 4 days
· Arun Gopalan College Park, MD for 1 day
· Neela Yennawar, State College, PA for 3 days
· Karthik Ranganathan, Dallas, TX for 2 days
· Chetana Kulkarni, Dallas, TX for 2 days
· Nitin Paradkar, Dallas, TX for 4 days
· Somnath Mukherji, Boston, MA for 1 day
· Dushyant Sethi, College Park, MD for 1 day
Complete list of people who are on hunger strike is at
http://www.ashaparivar.org/petition/binayaksen/index.php
Dr. Binayak Sen's case represents an alarming trend where human rights defenders that oppose state repression, including extra-judicial killings, are being held under draconian laws such the CSPSA (Chhattisgarh Special Public Security Act) and the UAPA (Unlawful Activities Prevention Act). Ajay T.G, an independent film maker and social activist from Chhattisgarh; Lachit Bordoloi, a human rights activist from Assam; Prashant Rahi, journalist from Uttarakhand; Govindan Kutty, editor of People's March in Kerala; Praful Jha, a journalist from Chhattisgarh; Vernon Gonsalves, an activist from Nasik; Arun Ferreira, Ashok Reddy, Dhanendra Bhurule, Naresh Bansode, activists from Vidarbha, have all been charged under the UAPA and kept under prolonged detention without bail. These draconian laws sanction the violation of due process by the state, and thus contravene internationally accepted norms of jurisprudence as well as democratic governance. As Mr.Kannabiran, National President of PUCL, India, argues in his letter to the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), the CSPSA and UAPA operate by criminalizing the very performance of civil liberties activities, and culpability is decided upon not by direct proof, but through guilt by association. This is the context in which many activists are questioning the charges of sedition brought against Dr.Sen - for example, Ms. Shalini Gera, an activist from Friends of South Asia, points out that the "evidence" presented by the state about Dr.Sen's "Maoist connections" actually refers to Binayak Sen's meetings with Narayan Sanyal, (a jailed 70-year-old Maoist leader) that took place with the permission of the jail authorities, and under their close supervision, when Dr. Sen, as the vice-president of the People's Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL), visited Sanyal in the Raipur Central Jail to provide medical and legal assistance.
As the State Secretary of PUCL of Chhattisgarh, and the national Vice President, Dr.Sen has been amongst the most vocal opponents of "Salwa Judum", a private militia movement armed by the Chhattisgarh Government to combat Maoist insurgency. Dr.Sen earned the ire of the government for opposing Salwa Judum which has itself contributed to a spiraling increase in violence and displacement of thousands of tribals. The permanent state of war created by Salwa Judum has led to large-scale and apparently voluntary displacement of indigenous communities, thus freeing up for corporate and industrial use, land and natural resources that have historically belonged to local communities.
According to Mr. Somnath Mukherji, an activist from the Association for India's Development, "these protests are not only about the violation of the human rights of Dr. Sen- they are also about the ongoing assault on the human rights of the people of Chhattisgarh whose lives and lands are being mortgaged to a vision of development that is antithetical to them".
For more information go to www.aidboston.org/FreeBinayakSen/
Costal management zone notification
The newly proposed Coastal Management Zone Notification (CMZ), 2008 spells doom for the already spotty environmental conservation, pushing out the traditional fishing communities. This is proposed to replace the current Coastal Regulation Zone (CRZ), 1991, which governs the coastal areas. CRZ (1991) has been amended many times, making it easier to take up environmentally damaging activities near the coast. The new notification continues this regressive trend, and does not even provide the protection given earlier. It also pushes out the traditional fishing communities away from the coast, but beings the "development" projects which need not be situated near the coast. The proposed CMZ has very little to show that its aim is conservation and has very little scientific bias. Though it defines a large number of areas as ecologically sensitive, it allows all developmental activities by merely mentioning it in a plan. There are no guidelines as to what kind of projects can be approved in the coastal areas. Thus, it also allows a larger number of stakeholders into the coast, at the same time, pusing out the traditional fisherfolk from the coast. This law has been drafted with very little community participation, and does not involve community in conservation measures. According to the Environment Protection Rules, since we need to formally record our complaints with the MoEF, we have drafted a petition to the MoEF with a note outlining the problems with this notification. Please go through the petition for detailed objections, and sign it.http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/cmz_objections/
Tuesday, April 1, 2008
Popular struggles against two multinational soft drink giants in Palakkad district gather momentum.
COCA-COLA and Pepsi, arch-rivals and thirst-busters for millions worldwide, have found common cause in Kerala against protest groups and Left organisations agitating against the way the bottling units of the two multinationals are depleting and polluting groundwater resources to the detriment of people in the drought-prone district of Palakkad. Coca-Cola has described its critics as a "handful of extremist protesters" unjustly targeting its business. Pepsi feels they are politically motivated.
Both Hindustan Coca Cola Beverages Ltd., which has a bottling plant in Perumatty panchayat in Plachimada taluk, and PepsiCo India, which has a similar production unit in Pudusseri panchayat in nearby Kanjikode, deny the allegations against them. Yet, to the residents of the villages concerned, a substantial number of them Dalits and Adivasis, the several ways in which such companies "ensure that `Life Tastes Good' around the world" appear to be the reason for the depletion and pollution of groundwater resources in the region. The agitations have been growing in strength, no doubt also with political intentions.
On April 9, the Opposition Left Democratic Front-ruled Perumatty grama panchayat (the only panchayat in the State ruled by the Janata Dal, one of the constituents of the LDF) decided to cancel the licence of the Coca-Cola company's bottling unit. Over a month later, on May 16, the Communist Party of India (Marxist)-led administration of Pudusseri panchayat too announced a similar decision regarding the Pepsi unit situated in WISE Park, within the Kanjikode Industrial Development Area.
Coca-Cola promptly approached the Kerala High Court and obtained a stay order against the panchayat's decision. At the time of writing, Pepsi was yet to receive "any intimation about the Pudusseri panchayat's decision". The panchayat authorities told Frontline that as per their information the company too was likely to approach the court.
WITHIN two years of its inauguration, and especially since April 2002, protests had become a regular feature in front of the Coca-Cola unit in Plachimada, as several places in Chittur taluk, including 10 colonies of Dalits and tribal people, began to experience a severe drinking water shortage. Despite the company's claims that the unit is a "greenfield soft-drink bottling factory", where a major share of the water not bottled is recycled and used to recharge the groundwater, residents of the surrounding villages continued to complain that indiscriminate extraction of groundwater had dried up many wells and polluted several others. The company's initial attempts to provide water in truck-loads to some of the affected villages was not appreciated, and the agitators continued to demand that it should take steps to restore groundwater aquifers and ensure continuous water supply in the affected villages, or face the prospect of closure.
Ironically, the bottling unit was established in 2000 on 38 acres (15.2 hectares) of mostly multi-cropped agricultural land, barely 2 km away from the river Chitturpuzha and near a number of reservoirs and irrigation canals. Until recently, according to the protesters, every day the company drew nearly 1.5 million litres of groundwater and about 85 truckloads of products left the factory premises. In 2002, protesters allege, the company also resorted to bringing water from borewells in neighbouring villages because the borewells it had sunk on its premises had failed to provide the required yield.
Within months of the establishment of the unit, local people had started complaining about the quality of water in the surrounding areas. Independent scientific studies conducted by some non-governmental organisations (NGOs) too had suggested a deterioration of water quality, possibly as a result of rapid extraction of water from the aquifers.
A study conducted by some well-known environmentalists, all members of the Kerala Sastra Sahitya Parishad (KSSP), too had warned that the extraction of groundwater by Coca-Cola at the current rate would stem the possibility of groundwater recharge because of the peculiar geological character and the deficient rainfall pattern of the region. The report also warned of a deterioration in the quality of groundwater as a result of over-exploitation. It said: "There is every possibility that the reported fall in the quality of water at Plachimada could have occurred because of the Coca-Cola company... The situation will become still worse if the over-exploitation is allowed to continue." According to the study, the groundwater extracted by the company is enough to satisfy the total domestic needs of about 20,000 people, about two-thirds of the population of the Perumatty panchayat.
Another inquiry into the complaint against Coca-Cola, conducted in January 2003 by the State Groundwater Department, too had reported a depletion in the level and a deterioration in the quality of groundwater in some of the open wells at Plachimada. However, the study attributed it to the "below normal rainfall in the area". It noted: "Since there is a drastic fall in rainfall, it is necessary to restrict the exploitation of groundwater at least till the status improved."
The State government had refused to take note of the plight of the villagers or to ask the company to curtail the extraction of groundwater. Meanwhile, Coca-Cola used the Groundwater Department's report to deny the allegations of the local community. Defending itself, the company claimed that it had complied with all Central and State laws and regulations; studies conducted by independent agencies and the Groundwater Department showed that there was no over-exploitation of groundwater reserves by the plant; in the past two years, annual rainfall in Kerala had decreased by about 60 per cent; it had employed an advanced rainwater harvesting technology to help recharge the area's groundwater reserves; water from the factory's seven borewells not used in making products was recycled back into the ground, using "government-compliant irrigation techniques"; the technology used by its waste water treatment plants was "among the most advanced in the world"; and that the effluents discharged from the unit complied with the standards and norms set by the State Pollution Control Board.
Nandu Banarjee, Director, Corporate Communications, and a spokesperson for Coca-Cola, said that the company had invested over Rs.80 crores in Kerala, had over 32,000 retail outlets, and provided nearly 5,000 jobs in a State with one of the highest rates of unemployment in the country. Moreover, in 2002 the company had paid indirect taxes to the tune of Rs.32 crores to the Central and State governments.
On May 16, the Kerala High Court issued a stay order on the decision of the Perumatty grama panchayat to cancel the licence granted to the Coca-Cola unit. The company argued before the court that it was denied a hearing by the panchayat, which had taken its decision in an arbitrary manner. The court has ordered the status quo in the matter question of the company's licence and asked the Secretary, Local Self Government, to take a decision in the matter, after considering its defence against the panchayat's decision.
Janata Dal State general Secretary K. Krishnan Kutty and Perumatty panchayat president Krishnan told Frontline that the decision would not be revoked. They said that the company "failed to explain satisfactorily even the amount of water being extracted by the unit from a perennially water-starved region". They said that the court order asking a government official to sit in judgment of the decision of the people's representatives went against the Constitution and democratic principles. "If the government Secretary issues an order contradicting the decision of the panchayat, we shall think of approaching the court on this issue," Krishnan Kutty said.
Explaining the background to the Pudusseri panchayat's decision to cancel the licence of the Pepsi unit, president K.G. Jayanthi said that the people of the village and surrounding areas had experienced one of the worst instances of water scarcity this year. Jayanthi told Frontline: "There was a severe shortage of drinking water. While earlier there was enough water to operate the pumps for four to five hours a day, this year the pumping had to stop in less than an hour. The panchayat had examined these factors in detail and found that the Pepsi unit was indulging in over-exploitation of groundwater sources, given the general drought situation prevailing in the area. Hence the decision to cancel the licence."
Pepsi's local level officials refused to comment on the issue, but said that they were yet to receive any official communication from the local body. Senior officials of the company were not available for comments. However, M. Abdul Rehman, managing director, WISE Park, described the decision against the Pepsi unit as an "instance of political one-upmanship" indulged in by coalitions. Rehman said: "It was the LDF which invited Pepsi to invest in the State. The company is the most important customer inside the 750-acre WISE Park Industrial Development Area, occupying 50 acres, and it had already invested over Rs.50 crores in the bottling unit and is providing employment to over 500 people. The company was established as per the single-window clearance mechanism under the Industrial Development Area Act, 1999, and the panchayat has no authority to cancel its operations. It was well known that the bottling unit is a water-intensive industry and Pepsi had conducted extensive water availability and quality studies before establishing its unit here. The panchayat's action against such high-profile units would only send wrong signals to potential investors, especially at a time when Kerala is desperately seeking industrial investments."
Significantly, even as the Democratic Youth Federation of India (DYFI) and other Left-oriented organisations were organising protest marches and seminars against the Cola factories, on May 16, over 700 workers of the Coca-Cola unit marched to the office of the Perumatty panchayat under the banner of the Coca-Cola Thozhil Samrakshana Samity (Coca Cola Employment Protection Committee). They staged a dharna before the panchayat office demanding protection for their jobs and protesting against the decision to cancel the licence.
Coca-Cola and Pepsi had barely survived an anti-Iraq war onslaught on their products, spearheaded by Left organisations in the State. Curiously, nowhere was the boycott of soft drinks more effective than in northern Kerala, especially in the Muslim-majority Malappuram district. In Malappuram, Indian Union Muslim League (IUML) president Panakkad Syed Mohammad Ali Shihab Thangal issued a boycott call against products of U.S.- and U.K-based multinational companies. Barely a month later, the State government, in which the IUML holds the key portfolios of Industry and Local Self-Government, looks the other way as allegations are levelled against U.S. corporate giants such as Coca-Cola and Pepsi. But given its enthusiasm to welcome ever-elusive industrial investments into Kerala, a State that is struggling to wish away its investor-unfriendly image, no one expects the government to go against the interests of the two multi-national market leaders.
So far the reaction of State government and ruling United Democratic Front leaders to the issue has been only to point out that it was under the previous LDF government that the two factories had started functioning. As the issue gets embroiled in political games and court dramas, it is the rural communities that are rapidly losing their access to water. As the refrain goes, for such communities, "there's nothing political about an empty well".
Both Hindustan Coca Cola Beverages Ltd., which has a bottling plant in Perumatty panchayat in Plachimada taluk, and PepsiCo India, which has a similar production unit in Pudusseri panchayat in nearby Kanjikode, deny the allegations against them. Yet, to the residents of the villages concerned, a substantial number of them Dalits and Adivasis, the several ways in which such companies "ensure that `Life Tastes Good' around the world" appear to be the reason for the depletion and pollution of groundwater resources in the region. The agitations have been growing in strength, no doubt also with political intentions.
On April 9, the Opposition Left Democratic Front-ruled Perumatty grama panchayat (the only panchayat in the State ruled by the Janata Dal, one of the constituents of the LDF) decided to cancel the licence of the Coca-Cola company's bottling unit. Over a month later, on May 16, the Communist Party of India (Marxist)-led administration of Pudusseri panchayat too announced a similar decision regarding the Pepsi unit situated in WISE Park, within the Kanjikode Industrial Development Area.
Coca-Cola promptly approached the Kerala High Court and obtained a stay order against the panchayat's decision. At the time of writing, Pepsi was yet to receive "any intimation about the Pudusseri panchayat's decision". The panchayat authorities told Frontline that as per their information the company too was likely to approach the court.
WITHIN two years of its inauguration, and especially since April 2002, protests had become a regular feature in front of the Coca-Cola unit in Plachimada, as several places in Chittur taluk, including 10 colonies of Dalits and tribal people, began to experience a severe drinking water shortage. Despite the company's claims that the unit is a "greenfield soft-drink bottling factory", where a major share of the water not bottled is recycled and used to recharge the groundwater, residents of the surrounding villages continued to complain that indiscriminate extraction of groundwater had dried up many wells and polluted several others. The company's initial attempts to provide water in truck-loads to some of the affected villages was not appreciated, and the agitators continued to demand that it should take steps to restore groundwater aquifers and ensure continuous water supply in the affected villages, or face the prospect of closure.
Ironically, the bottling unit was established in 2000 on 38 acres (15.2 hectares) of mostly multi-cropped agricultural land, barely 2 km away from the river Chitturpuzha and near a number of reservoirs and irrigation canals. Until recently, according to the protesters, every day the company drew nearly 1.5 million litres of groundwater and about 85 truckloads of products left the factory premises. In 2002, protesters allege, the company also resorted to bringing water from borewells in neighbouring villages because the borewells it had sunk on its premises had failed to provide the required yield.
Within months of the establishment of the unit, local people had started complaining about the quality of water in the surrounding areas. Independent scientific studies conducted by some non-governmental organisations (NGOs) too had suggested a deterioration of water quality, possibly as a result of rapid extraction of water from the aquifers.
A study conducted by some well-known environmentalists, all members of the Kerala Sastra Sahitya Parishad (KSSP), too had warned that the extraction of groundwater by Coca-Cola at the current rate would stem the possibility of groundwater recharge because of the peculiar geological character and the deficient rainfall pattern of the region. The report also warned of a deterioration in the quality of groundwater as a result of over-exploitation. It said: "There is every possibility that the reported fall in the quality of water at Plachimada could have occurred because of the Coca-Cola company... The situation will become still worse if the over-exploitation is allowed to continue." According to the study, the groundwater extracted by the company is enough to satisfy the total domestic needs of about 20,000 people, about two-thirds of the population of the Perumatty panchayat.
Another inquiry into the complaint against Coca-Cola, conducted in January 2003 by the State Groundwater Department, too had reported a depletion in the level and a deterioration in the quality of groundwater in some of the open wells at Plachimada. However, the study attributed it to the "below normal rainfall in the area". It noted: "Since there is a drastic fall in rainfall, it is necessary to restrict the exploitation of groundwater at least till the status improved."
The State government had refused to take note of the plight of the villagers or to ask the company to curtail the extraction of groundwater. Meanwhile, Coca-Cola used the Groundwater Department's report to deny the allegations of the local community. Defending itself, the company claimed that it had complied with all Central and State laws and regulations; studies conducted by independent agencies and the Groundwater Department showed that there was no over-exploitation of groundwater reserves by the plant; in the past two years, annual rainfall in Kerala had decreased by about 60 per cent; it had employed an advanced rainwater harvesting technology to help recharge the area's groundwater reserves; water from the factory's seven borewells not used in making products was recycled back into the ground, using "government-compliant irrigation techniques"; the technology used by its waste water treatment plants was "among the most advanced in the world"; and that the effluents discharged from the unit complied with the standards and norms set by the State Pollution Control Board.
Nandu Banarjee, Director, Corporate Communications, and a spokesperson for Coca-Cola, said that the company had invested over Rs.80 crores in Kerala, had over 32,000 retail outlets, and provided nearly 5,000 jobs in a State with one of the highest rates of unemployment in the country. Moreover, in 2002 the company had paid indirect taxes to the tune of Rs.32 crores to the Central and State governments.
On May 16, the Kerala High Court issued a stay order on the decision of the Perumatty grama panchayat to cancel the licence granted to the Coca-Cola unit. The company argued before the court that it was denied a hearing by the panchayat, which had taken its decision in an arbitrary manner. The court has ordered the status quo in the matter question of the company's licence and asked the Secretary, Local Self Government, to take a decision in the matter, after considering its defence against the panchayat's decision.
Janata Dal State general Secretary K. Krishnan Kutty and Perumatty panchayat president Krishnan told Frontline that the decision would not be revoked. They said that the company "failed to explain satisfactorily even the amount of water being extracted by the unit from a perennially water-starved region". They said that the court order asking a government official to sit in judgment of the decision of the people's representatives went against the Constitution and democratic principles. "If the government Secretary issues an order contradicting the decision of the panchayat, we shall think of approaching the court on this issue," Krishnan Kutty said.
Explaining the background to the Pudusseri panchayat's decision to cancel the licence of the Pepsi unit, president K.G. Jayanthi said that the people of the village and surrounding areas had experienced one of the worst instances of water scarcity this year. Jayanthi told Frontline: "There was a severe shortage of drinking water. While earlier there was enough water to operate the pumps for four to five hours a day, this year the pumping had to stop in less than an hour. The panchayat had examined these factors in detail and found that the Pepsi unit was indulging in over-exploitation of groundwater sources, given the general drought situation prevailing in the area. Hence the decision to cancel the licence."
Pepsi's local level officials refused to comment on the issue, but said that they were yet to receive any official communication from the local body. Senior officials of the company were not available for comments. However, M. Abdul Rehman, managing director, WISE Park, described the decision against the Pepsi unit as an "instance of political one-upmanship" indulged in by coalitions. Rehman said: "It was the LDF which invited Pepsi to invest in the State. The company is the most important customer inside the 750-acre WISE Park Industrial Development Area, occupying 50 acres, and it had already invested over Rs.50 crores in the bottling unit and is providing employment to over 500 people. The company was established as per the single-window clearance mechanism under the Industrial Development Area Act, 1999, and the panchayat has no authority to cancel its operations. It was well known that the bottling unit is a water-intensive industry and Pepsi had conducted extensive water availability and quality studies before establishing its unit here. The panchayat's action against such high-profile units would only send wrong signals to potential investors, especially at a time when Kerala is desperately seeking industrial investments."
Significantly, even as the Democratic Youth Federation of India (DYFI) and other Left-oriented organisations were organising protest marches and seminars against the Cola factories, on May 16, over 700 workers of the Coca-Cola unit marched to the office of the Perumatty panchayat under the banner of the Coca-Cola Thozhil Samrakshana Samity (Coca Cola Employment Protection Committee). They staged a dharna before the panchayat office demanding protection for their jobs and protesting against the decision to cancel the licence.
Coca-Cola and Pepsi had barely survived an anti-Iraq war onslaught on their products, spearheaded by Left organisations in the State. Curiously, nowhere was the boycott of soft drinks more effective than in northern Kerala, especially in the Muslim-majority Malappuram district. In Malappuram, Indian Union Muslim League (IUML) president Panakkad Syed Mohammad Ali Shihab Thangal issued a boycott call against products of U.S.- and U.K-based multinational companies. Barely a month later, the State government, in which the IUML holds the key portfolios of Industry and Local Self-Government, looks the other way as allegations are levelled against U.S. corporate giants such as Coca-Cola and Pepsi. But given its enthusiasm to welcome ever-elusive industrial investments into Kerala, a State that is struggling to wish away its investor-unfriendly image, no one expects the government to go against the interests of the two multi-national market leaders.
So far the reaction of State government and ruling United Democratic Front leaders to the issue has been only to point out that it was under the previous LDF government that the two factories had started functioning. As the issue gets embroiled in political games and court dramas, it is the rural communities that are rapidly losing their access to water. As the refrain goes, for such communities, "there's nothing political about an empty well".
Friday, March 7, 2008
Medha on Chengara
KOLLAM: Social activist Medha Patkar has expressed concern over the struggle for land by the landless poor at Chengara in Pathanamthitta district.
Talking to the The Hindu here on Thursday, she said Chengara was symbolic of what the Dalits and the Adivasis faced in the country.
Ms. Patkar wanted the State government to take a sympathetic attitude towards the Chengara struggle. She said she was confident that the Achuthanandan government would not allow another Nandigram at Chengara. She said the progressive elements in the government would understand the plight of landless people.
She said she was really worried over the situation last Monday when women involved in the struggle threatened self-immolation following reports that the police would move in to evict them from the estate.
Evicting them would be tantamount to a murderous action by the government, she said.
The Hindu
Talking to the The Hindu here on Thursday, she said Chengara was symbolic of what the Dalits and the Adivasis faced in the country.
Ms. Patkar wanted the State government to take a sympathetic attitude towards the Chengara struggle. She said she was confident that the Achuthanandan government would not allow another Nandigram at Chengara. She said the progressive elements in the government would understand the plight of landless people.
She said she was really worried over the situation last Monday when women involved in the struggle threatened self-immolation following reports that the police would move in to evict them from the estate.
Evicting them would be tantamount to a murderous action by the government, she said.
The Hindu
News from chengara
Police harassing Vedi workers who have been waging a non-violent agitation, says SJVSV
SP says the police were trying to comply with a High Court order to clear the encroachment
PATHANMTHITTA: A sitting held by the State Human Rights Commission at the Government Guest House here on Monday to inquire into allegations of human rights violations at the Kumbazha Estate at Chengara, near Konni, turned out to be a platform for the encroachers as well as the private estate management to air their grievances.
Sadhu Jana Vimochana Samyukta Vedi (SJVSV) president Laha Gopalan told Commission member A. Lakshmikutty that the police were harassing Vedi workers who have been waging a non-violent agitation at the Kumbazha Estate, demanding land for the landless families since the past seven months. He alleged that the police were foisting false theft cases against the workers and physically harassing them.
However, District Collector Raju Narayanaswamy and Superintendent of Police K.G. James clarified that so far they had not received any complaint pertaining to human rights’ violation at Chengara.
The SP said the police were trying to comply with a High Court order to clear the encroachment, without resorting to violent measures. However, the efforts had been in vain as the encroachers threatened to commit mass suicide in the event of police action, he added.
The Collector said the administration was making every possible effort to end the crisis and was awaiting a Government decision in this regard.
Ms. Lakshmikutty maintained that the officials were bound to comply with the Court order in letter and spirit and hence there was no point in blaming them.‘Workers harassed’
Meanwhile, chief manager (Legal) of Harrisons Malayalam Ltd. (HML) V. Venugopal and manager A.R. Santhshkumar also alleged human rights violation against plantation workers at the hands of the encroachers at the Kumbazha Estate.
They alleged that HML rubber plantations at Chengara had been witnessing gross violation of the laws of the land. There was no justification at all for encroaching upon a private property in the name of a land struggle, they added.
A group of women workers at the HML estate alleged that encroachment of the private plantation had rendered them jobless since the past seven months.
The HML management accused the vedi leaders of criminal offence by instigating the workers to commit suicide in the event of police action. They alleged that theft was rampant at the estate ever since its encroachement by the vedi workers.
The Hindu
SP says the police were trying to comply with a High Court order to clear the encroachment
PATHANMTHITTA: A sitting held by the State Human Rights Commission at the Government Guest House here on Monday to inquire into allegations of human rights violations at the Kumbazha Estate at Chengara, near Konni, turned out to be a platform for the encroachers as well as the private estate management to air their grievances.
Sadhu Jana Vimochana Samyukta Vedi (SJVSV) president Laha Gopalan told Commission member A. Lakshmikutty that the police were harassing Vedi workers who have been waging a non-violent agitation at the Kumbazha Estate, demanding land for the landless families since the past seven months. He alleged that the police were foisting false theft cases against the workers and physically harassing them.
However, District Collector Raju Narayanaswamy and Superintendent of Police K.G. James clarified that so far they had not received any complaint pertaining to human rights’ violation at Chengara.
The SP said the police were trying to comply with a High Court order to clear the encroachment, without resorting to violent measures. However, the efforts had been in vain as the encroachers threatened to commit mass suicide in the event of police action, he added.
The Collector said the administration was making every possible effort to end the crisis and was awaiting a Government decision in this regard.
Ms. Lakshmikutty maintained that the officials were bound to comply with the Court order in letter and spirit and hence there was no point in blaming them.‘Workers harassed’
Meanwhile, chief manager (Legal) of Harrisons Malayalam Ltd. (HML) V. Venugopal and manager A.R. Santhshkumar also alleged human rights violation against plantation workers at the hands of the encroachers at the Kumbazha Estate.
They alleged that HML rubber plantations at Chengara had been witnessing gross violation of the laws of the land. There was no justification at all for encroaching upon a private property in the name of a land struggle, they added.
A group of women workers at the HML estate alleged that encroachment of the private plantation had rendered them jobless since the past seven months.
The HML management accused the vedi leaders of criminal offence by instigating the workers to commit suicide in the event of police action. They alleged that theft was rampant at the estate ever since its encroachement by the vedi workers.
The Hindu
Wednesday, March 5, 2008
Chengara peoples struggles
This is a report from a Solidarity Team which went to Chengara, Pathnamtitta district, Kerala, to investigate the struggle of Adivasis and Dalits, going on for the last four months (August - December, 2007). One more among the many struggles peasants all over India are engaged in to rightfully claim land or to defend their meagre land-holdings aginst the encrochment of big national or multinational capital. It is happening in states governed by “left” parties, as well as those ruled currently by the Congress or by BJP. The fundamental issue is the same, everywhere. Contact informaton for some of the members of the Solidarity Team could be provided, if requested.
Click here for a compilation of mainstream media news items on Chengara [PDF, English, 400KB] »
Hari Sharma for SANSAD. News items compiled by Greenyouth
A Report on Chengara Land Struggle in Kerala - Peoples’ Movements Solidarity Team
08 November 2007 to 11 November 2007
Chengara speaks to India through the Chengara Pledge. It is the pledge of thousands of people, struggling for the last 120 days in Chengara Harrison Malayalam Estate, (also called as Laha Estate) seeking ownership of cultivable land to all 5,000 families there.
Chengara Pledge: As Recited by Soumya Babu, an 11 Year old Girl who said she will go to school only after she gets landI love my country. I will try to learn about the Constitution and laws of my country. I will work for fulfilling the pristine objective of the Constitution. I will take part in the nation building process in my own way. I will not discriminate against any Indian on the basis of religion or caste. I understand us as owners of a great tradition as well as protectors of a great democracy.
Country for the people (/Janangalkku Vendi Raashtram)/ People for the country /(Raashtrathuinuven di Janangal)/
Land struggle in Chengara, Pathnamtitta district, Kerala by landless Dalits and Adviasis (as well as scores of families from OBC communities, Muslims etc) from all parts of Kerala, started on 4 August 2007. The movement is a fight to re-claim ownership of land that has been part of a long standing promise of the Government. At present nearly 5000 families, more than 20,000 people, have entered the Harrison Malayalam Private Ltd Estate, living in makeshift arrangements. The Chengara Land struggle demands permanent ownership of agricultural land through transfer of ownership from the Harrison Company to the Dalits and Adivasis. The Sadhu Jana Vimochana Samyuktha Vedi (SJVSV), the collective that leads the struggle, has opted for the land take-over as strategy remembering the tradition of the great leader Ayyankali, the militant dalit leader whose mission was to ensure liberation of dalits from various forms of slavery, right to agricultural land, as well as right to education in Kerala.
The movement salutes Ayyankali and Ambedkar whose role in rights movements in Kerala is disproportionately highlighted in the modern social literature on Kerala. Raising the names of Ayyankali and Ambedkar as sources of inspiration is a political challenge to the mainstream political left parties. There is a widespread popular belief in Kerala that the official left were the sole forces which ensured rights to Dalits, including land rights. Such misrepresentations are now globalised through some academic works as well.
The movement has till now survived attacks, threats, epidemics and hunger.
The families have been staying there; facing threats from local communist party (Marxist) members as well as workers of the estate. The rubber trees in the estate have become too old for tapping. However the allegation is that the land struggle affects plantation activities. Harrison’s continued possession of land even after the land lease exhausted in 1996 itself is illegal. So is the case of immediate take over of land held in excess to the 1048 acres of land originally earmarked for Harrison Company. (According to laha Gopalan, President of the SJVSJ, the company got the land for lease for 99 years from a family to whom the local landlord had given for 34 years of lease for banana cultivation. This agreement was said to have been breeched when this family gave the land to the Harissons Company for 99 years.) The excess land occupied is expected to the tune of 6000 hectares
The Sadhujana Vimochana Samyuktha Vedi (SJVSV) is a radical departure in people’s initiative to attain land rights. It exposes the socio-cultural reasons for landlessness among dalits and adivasis in Kerala. It says that 85% of the landless in Kerala are the Dalits, and Adviasis, who were also traditionally excluded from attaining wealth, power, titles and assets. Various governments set up by different coalitions failed to address this social reality and avoided to eradicate it as priority. The SJVSV says that dalits and adivasis live in extremely uninhabitable slum like situations in Kerala. According to SJVSV there are 12,500 dalit colonies and 4083 adivasi colonies where tens of thousands of families live with extreme lack of basic amenities - facing civil, political, economic and cultural rights violations.
This condition - together with that of families living in temporary hutments, pavements, and the homeless - was excluded from Kerala’s social reality by the high tide of recent discussions on Kerala’s world renowned achievements in the field of social development. Landlessness continues after a poorly formulated land reform Act (implemented after fifteen years after its creation) was implemented in 1972. Public sphere in Kerala is abuzz with a misinformation that land question has been solved in Kerala, addressing the needs of the landless communities. The SJVSV says that dalits and adivasis could not benefit from the land reform of 1970s since its major focus was on conferring land to the tenants. In Kerala’s context the caste and cultural hierarchy, with strong oppressive segregation of these communities, did not allow them to be tenants; which is why many of them could not avail the benefits. Also, the lower rates of social membership, founding institutions etc. were essential factors which contributed to the concentration of distributed land (under the Land Reform Act) to some caste group which had developed these `abilities’. There was also the lack of a strong land rights movement from among the ranks of the dalits and adivasis.
In the present day context, common resources including land are monopolized by corporate agencies in flagrant violation of principles like ‘public trust’. Policies and laws in the past decade enabled monopolies to own land while the previous mode of relationship was in possession of land for long lease with abysmally low royalties. This was done at a time when the state had a constitutional obligation of ensuring social justice to all marginalised communities through the principle of positive discrimination, while dalits and adivasis remained landless and oppressed. To explain the situation in Kerala’s context, it is important to see that in 1972 the State government had issued a government order allotting 1,43,000 acres of land to Tatas. In comparison with this the total land distributed to thousands of families as part of land reforms was only between 3 and 4 lakh acres (as per official figures in 1966, around 10 lakh acres of land was available for distribution) . Such facts clearly indicate where the state stands when it comes to identifying the nature of land question and link it with the principle of right to live with dignity for the the dalits and adivasis. The demand for meaningful and dignified survival with sufficient area of agricultural land for dalit, adivasi communities is to be understood in this context. Together with this there is a need to examine the official understanding on the area of land required for dalit and adivasis. The earlier land rights movements in the 1990s have described how the dalit adivasi families were forced to bury their beloved inside their houses in many places. Even such families are considered as landed in official records. It was also observed that many dalit, adivasi families live in plots of a cent (one cent is one-hundredth of an acre) which is much less than the U.N..Habitat estimates for healthy life in * Urban *environments. Considering that contiguity of homestead and agricultural land is an essential condition for agrarian communities in Kerala, seeking refuge under technical definition is equal to avoiding responsibilities. So the acute landlessness among dalits and adivasis becomes an immediate human rights concern in Kerala. Kerala’s land reform tells us how a state policy for land reforms overruled the objective of the Article 14 of the Indian Constitution through formulating eligibility stipulations disregarding the long standing socio-cultural segregations faced by the dalits and adivasis.
Kerala was a land of unknown land struggles till the historic land agreement in 2001 October was signed between the protestingDalits and Adivasis of Kerala and the State government. Since then dalit and adivasi land struggles in Kerala attained a new order of practice. First ever, large scale mass reclamation of land happened in Muthanga, which also proved that the state response to militant struggles for land rights leads to extreme forms of state violence in Kerala like in other states in India. While we write this we are still unable to decide what would be the state response to such struggles in Sonbhadra ( U.P.), Rewa (M.P.) Khammam (A.P.) Kodaikanal (T.N) and many other known and unknown places where the people who for generations have tilled the lands have fallen to the ire of the state. Coming back to the Chengara Land struggle since 4 August 2007, one of the core factors that influenced the making of the struggle was the unjustifiable delay in responding to the rights of these communities by the state, in honoring the understanding between the state and the dalit-adivasi combine on distribution of fertile land as an immediate measure. Dalits and Adivasis in India are united in their experience of high forms of land alienation as well as the permanent forceful displacement from their natural habitats. Chengara explains to the world a not-so-much discussed reality in Kerala. On the other side the land struggle that has passed over one hundred days and could face an eviction through an order from the Kerala High court.
The people are facing continuous threat from the ruling left front activists - including one which is said to have appeared in the print media that the CITU proposed to evict the people engaged in the land struggle, if the police fail to do so. (Note: CITU is a trade union organization, affiliated to CPI-M.) Another critical question is how the present state government will approach the land struggle in the context of an response to the Kerala High Court which the Government needs to submit on the modalities of vacating people from Chengara estate. So the question become more of what a peoples government could do in such situations where rights movements of historically alienated and oppressed communities are in an organic struggle united to defend their human rights. Also, how the law of the land could adopt a new turn to defend the peoples demand rather than branding the struggles as mere illegal, violent and anti-state militancy.
Another important factor is that how Chengara land struggle is understood in the Kerala society, considering the fact that the origin of this is connected to the historical struggle which Ayyankali had led in 1907 demanding cultivable land to landless dalits and adivasis, and also to the dalit land rights movement of 1990s. While encoding these historical influences as major factors, it is also clear that Chengara movement has espoused a new politics of defining rights and achieving them through direct action.
*Why solidarity visit.*
Chengara connects Kerala to the larger reality of land struggles across the world where landless oppressed have successfully mobilized to assert land rights. While the official, state version on these movements remained as anti-state consolidation for vested interests, such movements have realized land for people, whose generations never hand chance to own and cultivate land. Land rights movements in Brazil, many African countries and Australia have made such historic land marks. In India, as we see the right to own and preserve land as well as protect land from corporate and state-sponsored land acquisition led to death of hundreds of people, many who were killed still remain unknown. It is in this context, we see that state responses to peoples democratic rights to land become more aggressive.
The Solidarity Team had following objectives:
1. To assess the ground situation through exchanges with struggling people.
2. To discuss the politics of land movements in other parts of the country.
3. To facilitate solidarity for the Chengara movement outside Kerala.
4. To present a report concerning the demands of the struggle, factors that led to the struggle, as well as responses towards it.
The SJVSVS politics is based on few important interpretations of the national and local political and social processes in the last few decades. These processes, which the SJVSV believes have sustained the coercive and non coercive forms of exclusion faced by the dalits and adivasis in India. One of the prominent landmarks in this connection is the historic Pune Pact between Gandhi and Ambedkar, which the SJVSV believes, was coerced upon the dalit leadership in order to facilitate a fictious national trans-caste unity.
*Background*
The Chengara struggle got a lot of inspiration from the land struggles of 2001, led by a Dalit Adivasi combine. By 2001 land struggles in Kerala attained a new order of practice. First ever, large scale mass reclamation of land was marked in the history of peoples struggles. Muthanga firing in 2002 was an eye opener to the supporters of struggle movements in Kerala when it was shown that the state response to militant struggle for right to land could face extreme forms of state violence in Kerala. The chronology of events concerning the implementation of agreements reached between state and the land rights movement indicates:
Chengara explains a land question spanned in colonial and post colonial era. The welfare-ist democratic state has failed to address the illegality involved in the transfer of the land to the Harrison’s or the illegal possession of land (raised by the descendant of the original owner of the land) as cited in the Kerala High Court Judgement on 24 September 2007 . Such situations indicate the need for immediate positive obligations from the state to provide fertile agricultural land in sufficient quantities, which the families in struggle could use as asset as well as means of survival.
For any one who believes that the true function of social engagement is to expose realities and opening avenues for natural justice and Human Rights of oppressed sections, Chengara has many things to offer. At a time when the state Chief Minister has come out with an idea of second land reforms, it is important to see how the people of Kerala, the opinion makers and leaders perceive the demands raised by the Chengara movement.
The following are the observations of the Solidarity Team on what a government, with intention to defend Human Rights of oppressed communities, could do in the context of Chengara Struggle.
* No bloodshed is the first demand from all those who support the movement. This demand is very important since we have seen what land rights movements in various parts in Kerala have faced with state and non-state violence where people were killed and injured.* Withdraw all cases against activists of the SJVSJ. The police and district administration should examine the matters regarding atrocities against the dalits and adivasis considering the interpretations of atrocity as laid down in the SC/ST Prevention of Atrocities Act.* Stop official as well as media projections of the movement as extremist and illegal. Rather the state and civil society of Kerala should declare solidarity and support to the movement so that Dalits and adivasis are freed of the historical injustice faced through generations. This is important and possible though meaningful dialogues between the communities in struggle and the state.* Accepting the movement as a peoples movement is key to this. Such being the case there must be a halt to the efforts by the police, in the main, to portray the movement as a law and order problem. From experiences around India, such branding of peoples resistance for right to reclaim and protect land have been used as alibis for indiscriminate use of force to suppress movements.* Since 4 August 2007, the arrests or illegal detentions are common in the area near the estate. Such acts indicate gross human rights violations including freedom of movement and freedom of assembly. Such acts of illegal detention are also alleged to be done by aggressive local cadre of the ruling party (CPI-M) misusing state power to suppress peoples movement. Subtle social boycott and denying freedom of movement result in loss of work and access to essential services for the already impoverishedfamilies, who are thus are facing great threat. All forms of violence result to threat to life and livelihoods and so this has to be stopped at the earliest.* In the past, due to absence of strong articulations of landless and marrginalised people about their right to own land, the state was adopting a go slow attitude to the needs. Considering that land ownership is key for all communities in Kerala to attain versatile economic and social potentials, such opportunity should be provided to the dalits and adivasis in a way they wish to materialise it.* Considering that the movement has come up in the context of repeated indifference from various governments; the solutions should be urgent, and must consider that the right to land is a human right to marginalised communities.* Land rights movements like Chengara are suggesting methods for meaningful elimination of landlessness. Chengara movement, quoting from the authentic data from the state as well as reputed agencies, says that there is enough land to be distributed to the landless. Such scientific options should be at the core when deciding on solutions, rather which adopting a charity or welfare approach.* Dalits and adivasis are the people living in harmony with the land, instead of an exploitative relationship. So it becomes the natural right of these communities to have possession of the lands since they were the people who always oriented their lives in a symbiotic relationship with the land.* Landlessness among dalits and tribals is the highest among all social groups in Kerala according to a study by the Kerala Shastra Sahitya Parishad (KSSP). Average land possession by Dalit families’ is 0.43 acres as against the state average of 0.86 acres. Reading this in the backdrop of social and cultural segregations, it is the duty of a democratic government to accept land rights by these communities as inalienable rights.* Delay in ensuring fertile land in sufficient quantity must be looked upon as a practice of segregation and discrimination against these historically suppressed communities.
Solidarity Team Members
Bijulal M.V., Human Rights and Law Unit, Indian Social Institute. Co-Convener, Delhi Support Group for people’s movements.
Ashok Chaudhury, National Federation of Forest People and Forest workers. Forest Rights Campaigner and Organiser, Uttar Pradesh.
Prakash Louis, Director, Bihar Social Institute, works on Peasant Question in Bihar and Dalit Rights
Roma, Kaimur Kisan Mazdoor Mahila Sangharsh Samiti Activist. Working with people’s movement for land rights in Uttar Pradesh & Madhya Pradesh.
Shanta Bhattacharya, Kaimur Kisan Mazdoor Mahila Sangharsh Samiti Activist. Working with people’s movement for land rights in Uttar Pradesh & Madhya Pradesh.
Vijayan MJ, Coordinator, Delhi Forum, New Delhi
Click here for a compilation of mainstream media news items on Chengara [PDF, English, 400KB] »
Hari Sharma for SANSAD. News items compiled by Greenyouth
A Report on Chengara Land Struggle in Kerala - Peoples’ Movements Solidarity Team
08 November 2007 to 11 November 2007
Chengara speaks to India through the Chengara Pledge. It is the pledge of thousands of people, struggling for the last 120 days in Chengara Harrison Malayalam Estate, (also called as Laha Estate) seeking ownership of cultivable land to all 5,000 families there.
Chengara Pledge: As Recited by Soumya Babu, an 11 Year old Girl who said she will go to school only after she gets landI love my country. I will try to learn about the Constitution and laws of my country. I will work for fulfilling the pristine objective of the Constitution. I will take part in the nation building process in my own way. I will not discriminate against any Indian on the basis of religion or caste. I understand us as owners of a great tradition as well as protectors of a great democracy.
Country for the people (/Janangalkku Vendi Raashtram)/ People for the country /(Raashtrathuinuven di Janangal)/
Land struggle in Chengara, Pathnamtitta district, Kerala by landless Dalits and Adviasis (as well as scores of families from OBC communities, Muslims etc) from all parts of Kerala, started on 4 August 2007. The movement is a fight to re-claim ownership of land that has been part of a long standing promise of the Government. At present nearly 5000 families, more than 20,000 people, have entered the Harrison Malayalam Private Ltd Estate, living in makeshift arrangements. The Chengara Land struggle demands permanent ownership of agricultural land through transfer of ownership from the Harrison Company to the Dalits and Adivasis. The Sadhu Jana Vimochana Samyuktha Vedi (SJVSV), the collective that leads the struggle, has opted for the land take-over as strategy remembering the tradition of the great leader Ayyankali, the militant dalit leader whose mission was to ensure liberation of dalits from various forms of slavery, right to agricultural land, as well as right to education in Kerala.
The movement salutes Ayyankali and Ambedkar whose role in rights movements in Kerala is disproportionately highlighted in the modern social literature on Kerala. Raising the names of Ayyankali and Ambedkar as sources of inspiration is a political challenge to the mainstream political left parties. There is a widespread popular belief in Kerala that the official left were the sole forces which ensured rights to Dalits, including land rights. Such misrepresentations are now globalised through some academic works as well.
The movement has till now survived attacks, threats, epidemics and hunger.
The families have been staying there; facing threats from local communist party (Marxist) members as well as workers of the estate. The rubber trees in the estate have become too old for tapping. However the allegation is that the land struggle affects plantation activities. Harrison’s continued possession of land even after the land lease exhausted in 1996 itself is illegal. So is the case of immediate take over of land held in excess to the 1048 acres of land originally earmarked for Harrison Company. (According to laha Gopalan, President of the SJVSJ, the company got the land for lease for 99 years from a family to whom the local landlord had given for 34 years of lease for banana cultivation. This agreement was said to have been breeched when this family gave the land to the Harissons Company for 99 years.) The excess land occupied is expected to the tune of 6000 hectares
The Sadhujana Vimochana Samyuktha Vedi (SJVSV) is a radical departure in people’s initiative to attain land rights. It exposes the socio-cultural reasons for landlessness among dalits and adivasis in Kerala. It says that 85% of the landless in Kerala are the Dalits, and Adviasis, who were also traditionally excluded from attaining wealth, power, titles and assets. Various governments set up by different coalitions failed to address this social reality and avoided to eradicate it as priority. The SJVSV says that dalits and adivasis live in extremely uninhabitable slum like situations in Kerala. According to SJVSV there are 12,500 dalit colonies and 4083 adivasi colonies where tens of thousands of families live with extreme lack of basic amenities - facing civil, political, economic and cultural rights violations.
This condition - together with that of families living in temporary hutments, pavements, and the homeless - was excluded from Kerala’s social reality by the high tide of recent discussions on Kerala’s world renowned achievements in the field of social development. Landlessness continues after a poorly formulated land reform Act (implemented after fifteen years after its creation) was implemented in 1972. Public sphere in Kerala is abuzz with a misinformation that land question has been solved in Kerala, addressing the needs of the landless communities. The SJVSV says that dalits and adivasis could not benefit from the land reform of 1970s since its major focus was on conferring land to the tenants. In Kerala’s context the caste and cultural hierarchy, with strong oppressive segregation of these communities, did not allow them to be tenants; which is why many of them could not avail the benefits. Also, the lower rates of social membership, founding institutions etc. were essential factors which contributed to the concentration of distributed land (under the Land Reform Act) to some caste group which had developed these `abilities’. There was also the lack of a strong land rights movement from among the ranks of the dalits and adivasis.
In the present day context, common resources including land are monopolized by corporate agencies in flagrant violation of principles like ‘public trust’. Policies and laws in the past decade enabled monopolies to own land while the previous mode of relationship was in possession of land for long lease with abysmally low royalties. This was done at a time when the state had a constitutional obligation of ensuring social justice to all marginalised communities through the principle of positive discrimination, while dalits and adivasis remained landless and oppressed. To explain the situation in Kerala’s context, it is important to see that in 1972 the State government had issued a government order allotting 1,43,000 acres of land to Tatas. In comparison with this the total land distributed to thousands of families as part of land reforms was only between 3 and 4 lakh acres (as per official figures in 1966, around 10 lakh acres of land was available for distribution) . Such facts clearly indicate where the state stands when it comes to identifying the nature of land question and link it with the principle of right to live with dignity for the the dalits and adivasis. The demand for meaningful and dignified survival with sufficient area of agricultural land for dalit, adivasi communities is to be understood in this context. Together with this there is a need to examine the official understanding on the area of land required for dalit and adivasis. The earlier land rights movements in the 1990s have described how the dalit adivasi families were forced to bury their beloved inside their houses in many places. Even such families are considered as landed in official records. It was also observed that many dalit, adivasi families live in plots of a cent (one cent is one-hundredth of an acre) which is much less than the U.N..Habitat estimates for healthy life in * Urban *environments. Considering that contiguity of homestead and agricultural land is an essential condition for agrarian communities in Kerala, seeking refuge under technical definition is equal to avoiding responsibilities. So the acute landlessness among dalits and adivasis becomes an immediate human rights concern in Kerala. Kerala’s land reform tells us how a state policy for land reforms overruled the objective of the Article 14 of the Indian Constitution through formulating eligibility stipulations disregarding the long standing socio-cultural segregations faced by the dalits and adivasis.
Kerala was a land of unknown land struggles till the historic land agreement in 2001 October was signed between the protestingDalits and Adivasis of Kerala and the State government. Since then dalit and adivasi land struggles in Kerala attained a new order of practice. First ever, large scale mass reclamation of land happened in Muthanga, which also proved that the state response to militant struggles for land rights leads to extreme forms of state violence in Kerala like in other states in India. While we write this we are still unable to decide what would be the state response to such struggles in Sonbhadra ( U.P.), Rewa (M.P.) Khammam (A.P.) Kodaikanal (T.N) and many other known and unknown places where the people who for generations have tilled the lands have fallen to the ire of the state. Coming back to the Chengara Land struggle since 4 August 2007, one of the core factors that influenced the making of the struggle was the unjustifiable delay in responding to the rights of these communities by the state, in honoring the understanding between the state and the dalit-adivasi combine on distribution of fertile land as an immediate measure. Dalits and Adivasis in India are united in their experience of high forms of land alienation as well as the permanent forceful displacement from their natural habitats. Chengara explains to the world a not-so-much discussed reality in Kerala. On the other side the land struggle that has passed over one hundred days and could face an eviction through an order from the Kerala High court.
The people are facing continuous threat from the ruling left front activists - including one which is said to have appeared in the print media that the CITU proposed to evict the people engaged in the land struggle, if the police fail to do so. (Note: CITU is a trade union organization, affiliated to CPI-M.) Another critical question is how the present state government will approach the land struggle in the context of an response to the Kerala High Court which the Government needs to submit on the modalities of vacating people from Chengara estate. So the question become more of what a peoples government could do in such situations where rights movements of historically alienated and oppressed communities are in an organic struggle united to defend their human rights. Also, how the law of the land could adopt a new turn to defend the peoples demand rather than branding the struggles as mere illegal, violent and anti-state militancy.
Another important factor is that how Chengara land struggle is understood in the Kerala society, considering the fact that the origin of this is connected to the historical struggle which Ayyankali had led in 1907 demanding cultivable land to landless dalits and adivasis, and also to the dalit land rights movement of 1990s. While encoding these historical influences as major factors, it is also clear that Chengara movement has espoused a new politics of defining rights and achieving them through direct action.
*Why solidarity visit.*
Chengara connects Kerala to the larger reality of land struggles across the world where landless oppressed have successfully mobilized to assert land rights. While the official, state version on these movements remained as anti-state consolidation for vested interests, such movements have realized land for people, whose generations never hand chance to own and cultivate land. Land rights movements in Brazil, many African countries and Australia have made such historic land marks. In India, as we see the right to own and preserve land as well as protect land from corporate and state-sponsored land acquisition led to death of hundreds of people, many who were killed still remain unknown. It is in this context, we see that state responses to peoples democratic rights to land become more aggressive.
The Solidarity Team had following objectives:
1. To assess the ground situation through exchanges with struggling people.
2. To discuss the politics of land movements in other parts of the country.
3. To facilitate solidarity for the Chengara movement outside Kerala.
4. To present a report concerning the demands of the struggle, factors that led to the struggle, as well as responses towards it.
The SJVSVS politics is based on few important interpretations of the national and local political and social processes in the last few decades. These processes, which the SJVSV believes have sustained the coercive and non coercive forms of exclusion faced by the dalits and adivasis in India. One of the prominent landmarks in this connection is the historic Pune Pact between Gandhi and Ambedkar, which the SJVSV believes, was coerced upon the dalit leadership in order to facilitate a fictious national trans-caste unity.
*Background*
The Chengara struggle got a lot of inspiration from the land struggles of 2001, led by a Dalit Adivasi combine. By 2001 land struggles in Kerala attained a new order of practice. First ever, large scale mass reclamation of land was marked in the history of peoples struggles. Muthanga firing in 2002 was an eye opener to the supporters of struggle movements in Kerala when it was shown that the state response to militant struggle for right to land could face extreme forms of state violence in Kerala. The chronology of events concerning the implementation of agreements reached between state and the land rights movement indicates:
Chengara explains a land question spanned in colonial and post colonial era. The welfare-ist democratic state has failed to address the illegality involved in the transfer of the land to the Harrison’s or the illegal possession of land (raised by the descendant of the original owner of the land) as cited in the Kerala High Court Judgement on 24 September 2007 . Such situations indicate the need for immediate positive obligations from the state to provide fertile agricultural land in sufficient quantities, which the families in struggle could use as asset as well as means of survival.
For any one who believes that the true function of social engagement is to expose realities and opening avenues for natural justice and Human Rights of oppressed sections, Chengara has many things to offer. At a time when the state Chief Minister has come out with an idea of second land reforms, it is important to see how the people of Kerala, the opinion makers and leaders perceive the demands raised by the Chengara movement.
The following are the observations of the Solidarity Team on what a government, with intention to defend Human Rights of oppressed communities, could do in the context of Chengara Struggle.
* No bloodshed is the first demand from all those who support the movement. This demand is very important since we have seen what land rights movements in various parts in Kerala have faced with state and non-state violence where people were killed and injured.* Withdraw all cases against activists of the SJVSJ. The police and district administration should examine the matters regarding atrocities against the dalits and adivasis considering the interpretations of atrocity as laid down in the SC/ST Prevention of Atrocities Act.* Stop official as well as media projections of the movement as extremist and illegal. Rather the state and civil society of Kerala should declare solidarity and support to the movement so that Dalits and adivasis are freed of the historical injustice faced through generations. This is important and possible though meaningful dialogues between the communities in struggle and the state.* Accepting the movement as a peoples movement is key to this. Such being the case there must be a halt to the efforts by the police, in the main, to portray the movement as a law and order problem. From experiences around India, such branding of peoples resistance for right to reclaim and protect land have been used as alibis for indiscriminate use of force to suppress movements.* Since 4 August 2007, the arrests or illegal detentions are common in the area near the estate. Such acts indicate gross human rights violations including freedom of movement and freedom of assembly. Such acts of illegal detention are also alleged to be done by aggressive local cadre of the ruling party (CPI-M) misusing state power to suppress peoples movement. Subtle social boycott and denying freedom of movement result in loss of work and access to essential services for the already impoverishedfamilies, who are thus are facing great threat. All forms of violence result to threat to life and livelihoods and so this has to be stopped at the earliest.* In the past, due to absence of strong articulations of landless and marrginalised people about their right to own land, the state was adopting a go slow attitude to the needs. Considering that land ownership is key for all communities in Kerala to attain versatile economic and social potentials, such opportunity should be provided to the dalits and adivasis in a way they wish to materialise it.* Considering that the movement has come up in the context of repeated indifference from various governments; the solutions should be urgent, and must consider that the right to land is a human right to marginalised communities.* Land rights movements like Chengara are suggesting methods for meaningful elimination of landlessness. Chengara movement, quoting from the authentic data from the state as well as reputed agencies, says that there is enough land to be distributed to the landless. Such scientific options should be at the core when deciding on solutions, rather which adopting a charity or welfare approach.* Dalits and adivasis are the people living in harmony with the land, instead of an exploitative relationship. So it becomes the natural right of these communities to have possession of the lands since they were the people who always oriented their lives in a symbiotic relationship with the land.* Landlessness among dalits and tribals is the highest among all social groups in Kerala according to a study by the Kerala Shastra Sahitya Parishad (KSSP). Average land possession by Dalit families’ is 0.43 acres as against the state average of 0.86 acres. Reading this in the backdrop of social and cultural segregations, it is the duty of a democratic government to accept land rights by these communities as inalienable rights.* Delay in ensuring fertile land in sufficient quantity must be looked upon as a practice of segregation and discrimination against these historically suppressed communities.
Solidarity Team Members
Bijulal M.V., Human Rights and Law Unit, Indian Social Institute. Co-Convener, Delhi Support Group for people’s movements.
Ashok Chaudhury, National Federation of Forest People and Forest workers. Forest Rights Campaigner and Organiser, Uttar Pradesh.
Prakash Louis, Director, Bihar Social Institute, works on Peasant Question in Bihar and Dalit Rights
Roma, Kaimur Kisan Mazdoor Mahila Sangharsh Samiti Activist. Working with people’s movement for land rights in Uttar Pradesh & Madhya Pradesh.
Shanta Bhattacharya, Kaimur Kisan Mazdoor Mahila Sangharsh Samiti Activist. Working with people’s movement for land rights in Uttar Pradesh & Madhya Pradesh.
Vijayan MJ, Coordinator, Delhi Forum, New Delhi
Friday, February 29, 2008
KCBC protest
KOCHI: The Kerala Catholic Bishops’ Council (KCBC) protested the statement by Chief Minister that naxalites were creating problems at Moolappilly. It was injustice to delay rehabilitation of evictees after it was clearly established that human rights violations were made at Moolamppilly, said a joint press release issued by Archbishop Daniel Acharuparambil, president; Bishop Joshua Mar Ignatious, vice-president; and Archbishop Mar Andrews Thazhath, secretary; of KCBC.
The Hindu
29.02.08
The Hindu
29.02.08
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