Shanti Priya
{About 5000 landless tribals and dalits fought a long-drawn battle at Chengara in Kerala for their right to own land and they succeeded to some extent. The struggle demonstrated the anti poor and pro-company character of political parties and trade unions. Such struggle should start at different places to take back the land taken by companies in connivance with the state. Ed.}
For over two years, Chengara in Pathanamthitta district of Kerala had been a theatre of war, a silent war, for land for that matter. Tribals elsewhere in India have been fighting for their land from where they had been evicted, here they have been fighting for the right over land on which they toiled. They believe that they too have a right to own cultivable land and as the Government is committed to provide equality, they are within their right to demand land and the government ought to provide them with the same.
The agitation began on August 4, 2007, when 300 families from various parts of the state converged on the rubber estate owned by Harrison Malayalam Plantations Ltd. They put up sheds and started living there. Their number swelled by the day and at one time, there were as many as 5,000 families, majority of them tribals.
They demanded five acres of land for cultivation and Rs 50,000 as financial assistance per family. However, the demand was later scaled down to one acre of land.
The plantation is now in the hands of RP Goenka group. Most of the land is under lease from the government and the allegation of the agitators is that the company is in possession of much more land than the actual extent under the lease. “If the company can encroach upon the government land why can’t we?” asked Ayyappan, an agitator.
The hostile living conditions in the plantation— lack of food, scarcity of water, lack of medical facilities — did not deter the ‘settlers’. About 13 people died during the period due to lack of medical care. Although the situation was tense, the government could not use force as the Kerala High Court had asked the government to oust the settlers without blood shed.
The struggle lasted for 790 days. At last, the Government headed by Chief Minister VS Achutanandan called for a peace talk in which Laha Gopalan and other of the Sadhu Jana Vimochana Samyukta Vedi (SJVSV), which spearheaded the agitation and opposition leader Oommen Chandy took part.
1,432 families out of the 1,738 families who had started living on the plantation would get land and financial assistance to build houses, as part of the settlement.
Kerala is one of the most densely populated states in India. Land has been very scarce. Under the package offered by the government and reluctantly accepted by the SJVSV, 27 landless tribal families would get one acre of land and Rs 1.25 lakh each for building houses. Landless Dalits, numbering 832, would get 25 cents of land and Rs 1 lakh, each. Others, numbering to 48 would get 25 cents of land and Rs 75,000, while 525 families who own up to five cents of land.
“We had no options other than accepting the package,” said Laha Gopalan, president of SJVSV. “The settlement was being imposed on us and there was the looming threat of violence by the CPI(M).” Of late there have been allegations by the SJVSV that the CPI(M) was intimidating and also ‘purchasing’ their activists. Selena, general secretary of SJVSV and the person in charge of the camp confirmed that seven families had left the camp making a show of it and had aligned themselves with the (Communist Part of India, Marxist).” Whether ‘purchased’ or not, it is a fact that the CPI(M) was able to make inroads into the Chengara estate and the apprehensions of crumbling unity, apart from the ominipresent poverty and sufferings of the days of struggle might certainly have persuaded the leadership to accept the package.
The Chengara land struggle has been an acid test for CPI(M), which leads the Left Democratoc Front (LDF) now in power in Kerala. The party, which has traditionally approached issues from the ‘class’ perspective rather than the ‘caste’ angle and have seen a steady erosion of support from the Dalit communities over the years, tried to play it cool in the early days of the struggle. But it was drawn to the vortex of the problem with the trade unions of plantation workers aligning themselves against the ‘settlers’ at Chengara. The combined forum of all trade union had alleged that their members, the rubber tappers, had lost their jobs because of the encroachment of the estate by the SJVSV. “The trade unions blockaded the entry/exit points of the estate and we had to innovate paths through the forest to reach the outside world,” says Selina.
“The allegation that our action deprived them of their livelihood is false,” said Gopalan. “Harrisons had already earmarked the area we occupied for replantation and there were no one working there.”
CR Neelakantan, environmental and social activist, who had been with the agitators from the early days, corroborates. “It was only when the government indicated that it would do a survey of the land occupied by Harrisons, that the trade unions started the blockade.”
The SJVSV had alleged that the company had encroached almost 5,000 acres in excess of what they were lawfully eligible to hold and that “the blockade itself was Harrison sponsored”.
“One of the positives of this settlement is the undertaking by the government to complete the survey of the estate within three months,” says Neelakantan. If the survey results prove the allegation of encroachment, it is bound to produce a chain reaction and all plantations in the state will have to be surveyed. “The plea of the government is that it does not have enough land to meet the demands of the landless,” points out B R P Bhaskar, senior journalist and political observer. “But the real picture will emerge only on a comprehensive survey of Kerala.”
Despite bitter allegations of betrayal and conspiracy by the ruling and opposition parties to deny the Dalits land for cultivation, the general consensus is that the Chengara land struggle was a success. “Those who have six cents of land have been denied land under the package,” says Gopalan. “However we proved that Dalits can lead their own struggle without intermediaries.”
“Despite the land reforms that were implemented in the 1970s, those who toiled on the land never possessed land,” says B R P Bhaskar. “Now for the first time the government has conceded land for cultivation rather than for dwelling place.” He asserts that 50 cents of land is a viable cultivable extent from Kerala standards, even though inadequate. It is a trend setter, opines Neelakantan. Indeed, the land struggles in future will have this precedent to quote.
{Courtesy Sopan December 2009
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