India’s tribes in land fight with business by Amy Kazmin (Financial Times, London)
“First, the land surveyors came. Then the rumours spread through the villages: Tata, one of India’s biggest conglomerates, would build a steel mill in the district.
“Finally, government officials came to ask the villagers in Lohandiguda in Chhattisgarh state, who are mainly illiterate farmers from the Gond tribe, to relinquish their fields for the promise of cash, jobs and a better future.
“For Banga Ram, the 65-year-old patriarch of a large family, the request was absurd. ‘What will we do with the money?’ he asked. ‘We have to do agriculture to feed these children.’ But local officials were not taking ‘No’ for an answer.
“Banga Ram was arrested. After he spent 13 days in jail, he says his sons signed away the land and accepted. [...]
“These conflicts, which tend to pit India’s most neglected people against its most powerful business houses, are helping to fuel the radical Naxalite guerrilla movement in the tribal belt, now increasingly considered India’s ‘Red Corridor.’ ‘There are slogans on walls saying “Naxals come and save us”,’ says Arundhati Roy, the writer and social activist. ‘People are begging them, “just come and train us.”’”
See anti-caste: OPERATION GREEN HUNT: INDIA’S DIRTY WAR ON TRIBALS AND LEFTISTS.
See also earlier anti-caste posts on Operation Green Hunt.
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