Friends, see an interesting article on Indian media http://www.expressbuzz.com/edition/story.aspx?artid=VgPf4cAm95k=&title=Shame%20on%20the%20media,%20shame%20on%20Indians&type = Shame on the media, shame on Indians [image: Click here...]<http://ad.in.doubleclick.net/jump/N3892.N3892.newindianexpress/B3053959.4;sz=300x250;ord=123456789?>
Prabha Zacharias and Ashley Tellis<http://www.expressbuzz.com/edition/searchresult.aspx?AliasName=TaQaXlBDAJs6zXq3Ti4bjT/ay7z3olDGtxahoXInINUGS65Bthi2FA==> 04 Sep 2008 12:19:00 AM IST WHAT explains the stunning silence in the mainstream media on a struggle that is redefining the political landscape in Kerala? This is not merely a struggle for land by the landless of a small place called Chengara, in Pathanamthitta district of South Kerala, but a massive unified fight by all those in Kerala, and across the country, who have no land and who care about people denied their basic rights. About 5,000 families have reached Chengara from across Kerala, the majority of them Dalits and Adivasis. Sample surveys show that the Dalits constitute 85 per cent of the landless in Kerala. From August 4, 2007, a democratic non-violent protest of the landless people has been in progress, but the state's ruling CPMled Left Front Government (LDF) is not ready to recognise it as a struggle for a just cause. Instead, it abets organised violence orchestrated by the Harrisons Malayalam, a plantation company which has no legal right over the land. We cannot escape the question of why landless people live in slums, even after the historic land reforms in Kerala. How should we understand the 'Kerala model' of development in this context? Harrisons Malayalam Limited is India's largest rubber plantation company, with nine major rubber plantations, and the second largest tea producer in south India, owning 10 tea plantations. It has 36 estates in Kerala over 70,000 acres. The 2,500-hectare estate in Chengara was on leasehold to Harrison Malayalam Ltd, which expired in 1985. The company has paid no rent to the state since 1994. Kerala is ruled by a person who has said that those in illegal possession of land should be blacklisted. If ever such a list is made, Harrisons will surely top the list. The landless Dalits and Adivasis are raising the demand for redistribution of agricultural land, exposing the hollowness of land reforms implemented by the CPI-Congress coalition in the early 1970s. But, to protect the interests of estate owners, the CPM in Kerala has apparently taken a position that land redistribution is no longer a substantive political agenda. The crux of the land reforms proposed in 1956 and implemented on 1 January 1970 was the fixing of ceilings on the land a family could possess, and most importantly, the promise that the surplus land would be taken over by the government and redistributed among the landless. However, the plantation sector was exempted from land ceilings. These reforms gave full ownership rights to tenant cultivators. Dalits and the Adivasis, who were never tenants within Kerala's traditional caste system, did not receive any protection from this law. As a result, lakhs of people had to live outside the land reform law. In 1968 the government had estimated that some 8,75,000 acres of land would be available for redistribution. Till date, it has been able to acquire just 1,24,000 acres. The rest has been usurped through underhand practices. Trusts were exempted from ceilings. Hence, overnight, hundreds of trusts were formed in Kerala. Through the trusts and by registering deeds in false names and other ways, that land was spirited away. And of the roughly 1,25,000 acres acquired, only 96,000 was redistributed. Obviously, the non-tenant dalits, adivasis and coastal people of Kerala stayed out of this redistribution. In 1972, the One Lakh Housing Scheme was announced to accommodate all the people who had been excluded by the land reforms. There were still more people left after the scheme was implemented. It is for these people that hundreds of Harijan colonies were established in Kerala. The first was formed in 1938. Lakhs of people live today crowded into two and three cents of land in some 16,000 to 20,000 official or unofficial colonies. These are the people who have become the focal point in the Chengara struggle. The state government is engaged in a brutal reprisal against this peaceful protest. The state and party apparatus, along with the Harrison Malayalam henchmen, are resorting to violent intimidation including rape, defamation and deliberate blockade of food, medicines and other essentials for the people in the protest camps for more than 10 days. Women are the most affected and many have testified that the attacks happened right in the presence of the police. Four Dalit Women from Chengara were kidnapped in the early hours of August 7, and taken to a godown of Harrison Malayalam Plantations where they were raped. The agitators are not being allowed to move out of the area. They are not able to buy rice and other necessary items and medicines. Children are not able to go to school.Women and children keep kerosene cans nearby while sleeping. Whenever the police come, they threaten self-immolation. Activists who visited the area have reported that a few days ago, a woman gave birth in extremely unsafe conditions. In short, there is a war-like build-up against an unarmed bunch of citizens. The Chief Minister of Kerala had no qualms about warning the leader of the struggle, Laha Gopalan, that if the protestors did not peacefully return to their villages (where they could put in applications for 3 or 5 cents of land for housing), they would have to encounter "police with horns and thorns"... In Samkutty Pattomkary's documentary film Chengara: From Slums to Agri-Lands, we see images of tribals and dalits with kerosene cans in their hands ready to immolate themselves.What message do these images send to the Indian government and to us? We need to generate pressure that will force the government to deal with the issue democratically, to redistribute land to the landless without causing any loss of life. If the 'Kerala model' of development is progressing like this, it is high time to extend solidarity from every democratic citizen of India to the people of Chengara and to end the silence on this issue in the media if we truly claim that the Indian media is the fourth pillar of democracy and not just a stooge of corporations and the Indian government. [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- Ranjit --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Green Youth Movement" group. To post to this group, send email to greenyouth@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/greenyouth?hl=en-GB -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
