A brief reading of recent Indian history shows that land for the landless and socio-economic freedom for the lower classes was a fundamental construct of Indian independence enshrined in the constituition by Gandhi and Ambedkar himself.

To watch the Indian governments these last few years succumb to unscrupulous capitalism of the variety practiced here in the U.S. is unfortunate. The so called economic liberalisation of the Indian economy, surrogated by the U.S. has not and will not reach the needy masses.

There is, unfortunately, more to the story than unscrupulous capitalism. The governments of India at all levels, including the courts, are rife with corruption. I know personally of a person of stature in southern India who has had her organization's ashram title contested by the family of the donor, and that court case, with a very prominent attorney representing the ashram, has had numerous hearings over several years with no decision. The legal system itself is much like Bleak House, and not much gets done anywhere without the payment of extensive bribes.

check out http://vanashakti.in/forest-rights.htm for another angle

The thousands of poor farmers in India should not give up hope. If the poor in South Africa can get rid of Aparthied, and the oppressed in Pre-Castro, can overthrow the right-wing Bastista regime in Cuba, anything is possible.

Keep on Marching!!!!

It is a bleak forecast as India and China are abandoning their founding principles in pursuit of the same mistakes and wreckless development they imitate of past industrial countries like US, England, France, Germany. Their most productive product has been poisoning ( air, water, land) this world for future generation.

India's promise of land reform and China to its labor constituents. China politbeaurau allow exploits of its work force which stood in the past with them to recover the country from ruling class. And India corruption racing ahead of promises made as part of independence forgetting that people of their country sacrificed themselves over issues of non-alignment and self governance against all developed countries and their capitalist foot soliders.

It is a shame of India and China to allow themselves to make the same mistakes ( labor, environment, political, economic) of US and European countries. It shows real lack of innovation ( adjusting to current state of polution, poverty, education, respect of human labor) in these countries , they are all immitators which will doom people of this world into living with Acid Ocean, sterilized ecology, man made food and betrayed humanity.

I hope they will abandon their pipe dream of becoming America and Europe. It is truly not worth it ( it is short sighted ).

I am truly grateful to witness people who march to show their face in front of imitators of failed policies. Never give up.

Who owns the land?

This is the same story repeated everywhere the Roman Empire, the old or the new, has gone. Displace the indigenous and force them to pay a tithe or tribute to the bank. Whether the indigenous Europeans, the loss of equity to modern Americans the past century, or the traditional peoples of India. Capitalism's chief prerequisite is a permanently displaced under-class -- no title of real estate free and clear. If people actually owned their own property, the ueber-class couldn't extort as much out of them.

So, who DOES own the majority of land in India? Let me guess -- the government and the banks? By own, I mean title free and clear, not someone paying a lifelong mortgage, rent, etc.

A government plan to set up tax-friendly special economic zones across thousands of acres of farmland in a bid to lure overseas corporations has also led to sometime violent protests over displacement in at least two states.

One of the greatest fronts in the class war, the mother of all wars, is the global corporations driving the people of the world off their land today like US corporations did in the 1970s thru 1990s.

TOTAL CORPORATE BOYCOTT
TOTAL CORPORATE BOYCOTT
TOTAL CORPORATE BOYCOTT

the right to own property is the right not to control property. ownership is a legal thing. banks demand collateral for their loans. the money is created out of thin air. the land maybe worth more than the loan to the bank. assigning land to a person makes it easier for banks to take over the land.

"Their most productive product has been poisoning ( air, water, land) this world for future generation"

Considering the West contributes to 70% of the worlds greenhouse gases (with a population of 25%) and has been doing so for the last 60-70 years, it has no right to preach about environmetalism. We created the current climate crisis. Not India or China. We still pollute 8-12 times more than India or China. Our colossal economic growth is predicated on our carbon footprint. Instead of lecturing India or china about environmentalism we need to reverse our growth rate first. India and china will have to feed and clothe their masses first and bring them out and aboive the poverty level first irrespective of what our touchy feely environmentalists think.

I wonder what percentage of the non land owning persons are of the "Untouchable" caste? Though discrimination against this class has been outlawed for a long time, it is very much alive and well in much of India.

In the early 50s my late father , a pioneering agricultural scientist , formulated a country-wide scheme for oilseeds and jute which would have benefitted the marginal farmer.Nothing came of it.(Though subsequently " Nature' accepted his article based on this work for publication in 1961.)

The Delhi beaureaucracy , obsessed with massive Industrialization and the First of the Five Year Plans -nipped it squarely in the bud. ( Notwithstanding the fact that his good friend was the then economic czar under Mr. Nehru.)

Mr. Nehru though ,seems to have been totally sincere .And passionately believed in his vision of dragging a 'benighted' country ,kicking and screaming ,into a fledgling modernity.

Nonetheless the fact remains that his was a vision deeply flawed -and shot through with incredible naivete and pie-in-the-sky optimism. As if that were not enough , his vision squarely turned its back on Gandhiji's vision of building a much more broad based , inclusive and equitable society from the very grass-roots.

However the true rot of our national character ( if there be any such )was kicked into high gear under Mrs. Gandhi.We are still to recover . And perhaps might never will.

Years later what do we have : pockets of unreal prosperity set in a vast desert of searing poverty.

These people ask for just a few scraps off the High Table : a little land that they can cultivate in order to sustain themselves and their own.

Yet the state bears down on them . Denying them even this pittance -while ,in the same breath ,forking out vast tracts to Corporates and MNCs for mega industrial projects.

Even more poignant is the plight of the tribals ( adivasis ) who've lived in the deep forests . Over thousands of years they've evolved a way of life and culture that's as fragrantly exquisite as those of the San Bushmen or Aborigines. Yet all they stand for ,is poised for extinction by our travesty of a 'civilzation' . ( I've encountered these folk but once and remain haunted and seared to the depths of my soul by the memories.)

However if upon this march has fallen the spiritual mantle of Gandhiji's 1931 Dandi March ,then this might well herald a new dawn. Perhaps the beginning of the true beginning.

Just to make a clarification for the fourth poster (7.24) it was Fidel Castro who freed Cuba from the U.S. backed mass murderer and torturer Batista and it was Fidel who defeated the U.S. backed, racist apartheid regime of South Africa in the war in Angola which led to the demise of the apartheid system a year later.

I read somewhere that the "masters-of-the-universe" have made the extinction of hundreds of millions of Earthlings part of their economic planning for the 21st century. The Bush administration's blessing of India in recent years tends to make me believe that the epidemic of agrarian suicides is all part of the plan to corporatize agriculture across the planet, and create a consumer class in India which must necessarily be smaller in number than the current subsistence-laborer class. One hates to believe in conspiracy theories, but if a large number of facts are related in the same way, then certain conclusions are inevitable.

"Though discrimination against this class has been outlawed for a long time, it is very much alive and well in much of India."

True. Its akin to Classism' and 'Racism' in the U.K. and U.S. There are laws against it but the practice remains. Unfortunately most of the marchers would probably fall under the 'untouchable' class, though its the upper-class brahmins who mostly follow these arcane concepts. In my travels in India I did come across instances where the so called lowest classes were not allowed into certain temples, etc.

even if one person in the country continues to get rich, the economics will call that growth. 9% growth simply means, that the rich continue to be richer while the poor further lose whatever is left. gandhi once said, its not how many rich people we have that matters. what matters is what is the state of the poorest in the country. such a parameter would be the actual judge of our progress. maybe for a change forbes magazine can take out a list of 100 poorest people in the country and their conditions.

Instead of a bloody population-reducing war, birth control and a some socialism could help.