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By Jonathan Weedon There was jubilation among the Janadesh marchers as the government announced the setting up of a land reforms committee and fast-track courts at the state level. True, the history of land reform in India is littered with broken promises and failed legislation, but Janadesh has brought land reforms for the poorest back onto the national agenda
The morning of Monday, October 29, 2007 began with prospects looking bleak for the 25,000 Janadesh marchers camped in the Ramlila Grounds, in the heart of Delhi. They had arrived the previous evening, after a 17 km march up from the Apollo Hospital in the south of Delhi, the last of many long days of marching along the hot, dusty highway from Gwalior, where their journey began 27 days and 320 km before on October 2. Comprised of poor and landless farmers, coming mostly from the dalit and adivasi communities, the marchers had come to Delhi to press the government to enact a sweeping new programme of pro-poor land reforms. The march, dubbed the Janadesh, or People’s Verdict campaign, had been organised by the Gandhian people’s movement Ekta Parishad, which has been campaigning in India on land and livelihood issues for the past 30 years. The plan for the morning of the 29th, the last day of the Janadesh march, had been to march towards the parliament building, some 3-4 km away, to present their demands to the government. If the government heeded their calls, they would then return to their homes to celebrate their victory with their families. If they were ignored, they would instead sit in indefinite satyagraha protest outside the parliament until the government agreed to listen to them. Everything had seemed in order when they arrived at the Ramlila Ground the day before – their food and water trucks were already there, and the marchers had settled down for yet another night of sleeping in the open, as they had for every night of the march so far. But overnight the gates of the Ramlila Ground were locked from the outside, and the marchers awoke to find a heavy police presence, perhaps some 2-3,000-strong, surrounding the ground. Only one exit had been left unlocked, and that was now blocked by a police barricade. No clear explanation was forthcoming for this sudden turn of events. At first the police officers in charge simply asked the marchers to postpone their departure from the planned time of 8.30 am until 9.30 am. This was accepted, and in preparation, the columns of marchers began to form at around quarter to nine – patient lines of men and women, still bearing the green-and-white banners of Ekta Parishad which they had brought with them all the way from Gwalior. 9.30 am came and went, the police asking the marchers to wait another ten minutes, and then another ten minutes. Finally, at around 10 am, it was announced that the march would not be allowed to leave the Ramlila Ground. No clear explanation was given, the officers in charge simply stating that they had been ordered to keep the marchers in the Ramlila Ground for the time being. As to who was ultimately responsible for the order, or the reasoning behind it, nothing was said. Shocked by the refusal to allow the peaceful protest march to pass, P V Rajagopal, the President and Founder of Ekta Parishad, and leader of the Janadesh march, told the police and the government that if they were not permitted to come to parliament to make their voices heard, they would stay in the Ramlila Ground, fasting, until the government agreed to listen to them: “You must be prepared to receive our dead bodies,” he warned, “because we will stay here and starve if you refuse to receive us and hear our demands.” As the morning dragged on, and it became apparent that the police had no intention of yielding anytime soon, the columns of marchers dissolved as people sought out the sparse patches of shade available within the ground. The mood amongst the marchers seemed to be calm, patient and defiant, displaying yet again the quiet courage which had sustained them through all the hardships encountered on the long road to Delhi. If any had doubts or reservations about their situation, they were not apparent. More common seemed to be the view expressed by the leader of a group from Bihar: “We have come here to get land. We will not leave until Rajagopal tells us that the government has given us a good response.” Midday passed with no fresh news, and rumours about what was going on outside, and what the government was going to do, chased each other around the ground. Then, just after 3 pm, the mood changed. It was at first perceptible in a slow trickle of marchers towards the stage, which turned into a flood as the news spread through the crowd. Gauri, an activist with the Ekta Parishad cultural team, grabbed me by the arm and excitedly explained what was happening: “The [Rural Development] Minister is coming to make an announcement. The government has accepted all of our demands!” It seemed too good to be true, but ten minutes later a ministerial Ambassador carrying the Rural Development Minister, Dr Raghuvansh Prasad Singh, preceded by a frenzied phalanx of dancing and drumming activists, arrived at the ground. As he had previously done when he attended a rally along the Janadesh route in Palwal on October 24, he began by saluting the courage of the marchers, calling the Janadesh march a “historical movement” and comparing it with Gandhi’s non-violent struggle for Independence. In Palwal he had also claimed to support wholeheartedly the three key demands of Janadesh, for a National Land Commission, fast track courts, and a single window system on land, but had stopped short of offering any concrete commitment to fulfill any of those demands. This time he was able to give a different message, the one that the 25,000 marchers had been hoping to hear since they set out from Gwalior: “No one can neglect Janadesh – everyone has to accept it,” he announced. “The government has accepted all of the demands of Janadesh.” Once the cheers from the crowd had been allowed to die down, it was explained in slightly more detail exactly what this will entail. A National Land Reform Committee will be set up under the auspices of the rural development ministry, with a mandate to take the framework document for a new National Land Policy drafted by Ekta Parishad and convert it into policy and legislation. Where state-level action is required, as in the setting up of fast-track courts and a single window system, the committee will be empowered to put pressure on state governments to enact appropriate legislation. But perhaps the most crucial aspect of the new committee will be its composition – 50% of its members will come from social and civil society organisations involved in the land rights struggle, and will be selected by Ekta Parishad. Of course, this is not by any means the end of the land struggle for Ekta Parishad. Anyone who has even briefly studied the history of land reform in India will know that it is a story littered with broken promises and failed legislation, all the way back to the original post-independence Land to the Tiller policies, which were largely circumvented or subverted from their original intent. It is, nevertheless, an important step forward. The march has significantly raised the profile of the land reform issue both in India and abroad, and the central government has, at the very least, been forced to publicly acknowledge the legitimacy of the issues and concerns of some of the poorest sections of Indian society. Exactly how much the committee will deliver is still uncertain, but we will not have to wait too long to get the first indications – the rural development minister has promised that the committee will be set up and running within a month. Ramesh Sharma, a senior Ekta Parishad activist and Advocacy Coordinator for the Janadesh campaign is optimistic: “The government will work with us because they have seen that we are capable of mass mobilisation. If they fail to live up to their promises we can pressure them with the threat of another mass action.” So for the time being at least, the activists of Ekta Parishad can celebrate their great success. Following the announcement by the rural development minister, Rajagopal announced that from now on they would celebrate every October 29th to mark their historic success. And as the sun set over Ramlila Ground, the marchers dancing and singing in jubilation, who could deny them their moment on this, the first ever Janadesh day? (Jonathan Weedon is volunteering with Ekta Parishad. He participated in the Janadesh padayatra) Read the first part of Jonathan Weedon’s account of the Janadesh march at http://infochange.dreamhosters.com/index.php?
option=com_content&task=view&id=6674&Itemid=74 InfoChange News & Features, October 2007
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