“Selling a dream to millions of countrymen and doing exactly the opposite has unfortunately become the way of governance in the country,” P.V Rajagopal, Member of National Land Reform Council and leader of Ekta Parishad, an NGO waging a struggle for land reforms said here on Sunday.
In a chat with The Hindu on Sunday on the sidelines of Jansatyagraha, a non-violent movement backed by people's organisation, which covered Prakasam and Guntur districts, Mr. Rajagopal sounded upbeat while talking about the mission challenging the “development model,” being sold by the governments and said that it would create a broad base for a people's movement for comprehensive land reforms.
The first phase of Jansatyagraha began from Kanyakumari on October 2 and would cut across 338 districts covering 80,000 km and reach Gwalior on October 1, 2012. The yatra will motivate land-less poor to claim their rights through non-violent means.
The 20-member team visited parts of Prakasam and Guntur districts to assess problems of alienation of rural poor deprived of their land on Friday and Saturday. They met a delegation of displaced farmers in villages under proposed Vadarevu and Nizampatnam Port and Industrial Corridor (VANPIC) and collected reports at a meeting held in Vijayawada on Sunday.
The team observed that the land acquisition for the proposed project was in total violation of the laws of land.
In separate interactions with Housing Minister Kanna Lakshminarayana and Collector V.N. Vishnu, the team demanded setting up of joint committee of government officials and NGOs to review land problems in the district and also to examine the issue of distribution of land to yanadi community.
“The phenomenon of growing violence has been traced to problems in delivery of justice and efficiency of system and the successive Governments have not any thing to improve both,''Mr. Rajagopal said.
‘Focal point'
With land becoming the focal point in the conflict raging between communities and the state, has demanded the Centre to begin the process of re-distribution of land to millions of landless poor, which is the cornerstone of a Comprehensive National Land Reforms Act, the objective of Jansatyagraha, Mr. Rajagopal said.
He said that criminalisation of industrial policy has allowed a free hand to vested interests with money and technology to grab land. In many states large tracts of assigned land have been given away for setting up of industries, which itself was a violation of law.
