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A massive campaign for land rights in Gujarat forces the
state government to grant land titles to thousands of adivasis
Between April and June every year traders appointed by
the Gujarat State Forest Development Corporation employ over 100,000
tribal women to pluck timru (tendu) leaves, a Minor Forest Produce
(MFP) used for beedi-rolling. The traders exploit the women, paying
them unreasonably low wages. In 1987 Disha, a
voluntary agency founded by M D Mistry, a former trade unionist, began
fighting for adivasi rights. It managed to get the government to increase
the rate of leaf collection. Disha organised the cultivators and labourers
under the Gujarat Agricultural Labourers' Union (GALU) and took up
complaints with their employers. It has also been involved in advocacy
with the government for increasing and ratio!
nalising minimum wage and welfare programmes for agricultural labourers.
The government revised the wage from Rs 15 to Rs 32 in 1996. Land rights for adivasis has been Disha's main
campaign. When the forest department declared all forestland national
property, subsistence farming became a crime. The result all over the
country was a drive to evict or limit adivasis who practised such farming.
Atrocities by the forest department against the adivasis increased. Disha
began the campaign with handbills to highlight their problems; delegations
then began to visit Gandhinagar, the state capital, to get the support of
ministers and government officials. Declaring that the transfer of land
to cultivators was not a state subject, the forest minister pleaded
helplessness. Then in 1989, Disha unearthed
a government circular which said that forest land cultivated prior to 1980
could be given to cultivators. Disha began a de!
tailed survey of the adivasis' land holdings. It also spread the
campaign to other parts of Gujarat. The movement gained momentum and
spread to six districts. A mammoth rally of 10,000 people in Ahmedabad in
1992 resulted in the chief minister constituting a state-level committee
to study the issue. In February 1994 when
Disha planned another rally, the government gave them a written guarantee
that henceforth the forest department on land under cultivation prior to
1980 would undertake no tree plantation. They also guaranteed that no
fines would be imposed on the tribal cultivators and that land titles
would be issued to the adivasis as soon as the state received the
necessary permission. The Gujarat government
began hasty negotiations. Five thousand adivasis met the CM and soon
after, in a symbolic gesture he handed over land titles before a crowd of
over one lakh tribal. In principle, the state has agreed to han!
d over land title deeds to 68,000 adivasis whose names have been recorded
in Disha's survey. Over 30,000 hectares of land have already been
released. People are able to cultivate their land free of the tension of
being attacked by the forest department. In
February 2000, Disha organised a demonstration to pressurise the
government to regularise the forest workers, especially plantation workers
and watchmen, who have worked 900 days in four successive years. They
also demanded enforcement of labour laws and conducted Grievance Cell
meetings. Disha is now working with nearly one lakh women tendu-leaf
collectors and forest labourers in the area. Contact: Disha, Eklavya
Sanghatana
9 Mangaldeep Flats, P O Gandhi Ashram
Ahmedabad- 380 027
Gujarat, India
Tel: 91-79-755
9842
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