It’s the weakest of the weak that have emerged victorious against the mighty Telangana State government in the High Court on Wednesday, at a time when the protesting villages under the Mallannasagar project were reportedly giving in one after the other.
Ironically enough, the petitioners from Bardipur village of Jharasangam mandal in Medak district, who challenged the controversial GO 123, did not own an inch of land anywhere. They are agricultural labourers, all from marginalised communities, and predominantly women.
“We are very poor, and totally dependent on farm labour. How should we live if the lands are taken away, and we lose work? We have nowhere to go,” complains Algi Tukkamma in a choking voice, with the least inkling that her name will henceforth be repeated with reverence, whenever the ‘Algi Tukkamma and others vs. the State of Telangana’ is invoked in the hallowed court rooms.
All the 23 members who challenged the GO were here to attend a meeting, in the backdrop of the judgment quashing the order.
Tukkamma, in her fifties, lost her husband two years ago, and lives with her two sons, who are also agricultural labourers. Her husband Pentaiah died of heatstroke, while working in mid-summer under the employment guarantee scheme.
‘Apathbandhu’ scheme, which promises monetary compensation to the families of heatstroke victims, did not come to her help.
“I made several rounds to the mandal headquarters, but to no avail. Every time I went, I was told, the money was yet to come,” she says.
The second time she was deprived of compensation was, when the government decided to acquire farm lands of three villages under the GO 123 for National Investment and Manufacturing Zone. For once, she decided to retaliate.
With most farmers from Bardipur, Cheelapalli, and Yelgoi villages yielding to the government, 16 women and seven men from the Dalit colony of Bardipur came together to fight the case under the guidance of the Telangana Agricultural Workers Union. Most of the other villagers came to know of the case only after the judgement was delivered.
“We cannot lose more than we have already lost,” says A. Jayamma succinctly. Born and married in the same village, she is relatively the more educated in the group. She left her General Nursing and Midwifery course in the city after two years of study, owing to poverty. “I was not used to farm labour. But I had to learn it for sharing the family burden. Even that was being snatched away,” she says.
G. Sailu, the district secretary of the Union, says even farmers were not happy with the price offered by the government, but were forced into signing the agreement.
“They were threatened that they would have to make rounds of courts if they didn’t agree,” he says.
