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New Delhi: All India Kisan Sangharsh Coordination Committee (AIKSCC) members and farmers arrive for a two-day rally to press for their demands, including debt relief and remunerative prices for their produce, in New Delhi, Nov 29, 2018. Photo: PTI
Soon after police personnel drove up in a convoy of vehicles that Friday, August 31, 2018, “
Adani ke log (Adani’s people)” arrived with earthmoving equipment, recounted Adivasi (tribal) and Dalit villagers in Mali, in this lush eastern corner of Jharkhand.
“There were eight to 10 police for each of us villagers,” said Sita Murmu, a wiry farmer in her 40s from the Santal community, one of India’s largest indigenous tribes, describing the attempt that followed to take over the villagers’ farmlands, abutting a clutch of mud and brick homes.
These fertile, multi-crop lands are their only source of livelihood, and the villagers were shocked when the earthmovers began uprooting valuable palm trees and bulldozing the young paddy stalks, laboriously sown weeks ago.
“We
First Published: Dec 03 2018 | 09:11 AM IST