🙌🏿Do read @RahulMaganti's reportage on how the #Amaravati project was displacing thousands of farmers from fertile lands, destroying small land holders,creating unemployment for agricultural labourers & forcing desperate migrants into exploitative, informal construction labour.
The master plan for the #Amaravati Project,prepared by a consortium of companies from Singapore,spoke about creating 56.5 lakh jobs by 2050 but the little work created so far were informal,contractual #jobs in construction,unprotected by any labor laws.ruralindiaonline.org/articles/mega-…
Even these few,exploitative jobs were given to out of state migrant labourers, willing to work for abysmal wages,while the most vulnerable local population who had been rendered jobless by the project,such as #Dalit families of Nelapadu,continued to suffer.ruralindiaonline.org/articles/a-was…
The #realestate boom associated with the project too was skewed, benefitting upper caste patta landowners while small #Dalit landowners, alotted land under the 1973 AP #Land#Reforms Act,weren't being compensated equally under the land pooling scheme. ruralindiaonline.org/articles/soari…
The #LandPoolingScheme designed to acquire land for #Amaravati disregarded the safeguards promised by the 2013 #LARR Act, including an assessment of the social & environmental impact, consent of at least 70%of those affected & fair resettlement packages. ruralindiaonline.org/articles/this-…
An ex IAS officer, who witnessed the ground realities of the #Amaravati project, is reminded of Oliver Goldsmith's Deserted Village poem:
“Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey/ where wealth accumulates & men decay” – sum up what is happening in Amaravati”
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‘Who knew the lack of rain could kill my art?’ (a thread)
Three decades ago, no one wanted to teach a young Sanjay Kamble how to work with bamboo.
Today, when he wants to teach everyone his dying craft, no one wants to learn.
“It’s ironic how times have changed,” the 50-year-old says.
With the bamboo that grows in his one-acre field, Kamble mainly crafts irlas – a kind of raincoat used by paddy farmers in this region in western Maharashtra.
“My lungs feel like stone. I can barely walk,” says Manik Sardar.
In November, 2022, the 55-year-old was diagnosed with silicosis – an incurable pulmonary disease. “I have no interest in the upcoming elections,” he continues,
“I am only worried about my family’s condition.”
Naba Kumar Mandal is also a patient of silicosis. He adds, “elections are about false promises. For us, voting is a routine task. No matter who comes to power, things will not change for us.”
“I reach here by 8:45 a.m. and we start work by nine. By the time I am home, it is 7-7:30 in the evening,” says Madan Pal. ‘Here,’ is the tiny carrom board factory in Suraj Kund Sports Colony in Meerut city, Uttar Pradesh.
Karan, 32, who has been working here for 10 years, inspects each stick of wood and segregates those that are damaged and will be returned.
“It is not difficult to make a board, but it is not easy to make the coins glide on the playing surface.”
Lenindhasan, or Lenin– as he is called – and his friends, are trying to replace modern rice varieties and resist mono-cropping. Their plan is to restore lost diversity. And to germinate a rice revolution.
It's a different kind of revolution, led by another kind of Lenin.
Lenin cultivates 30 varieties of rice. He sells another 15 raised by fellow farmers. And he conserves 80 types of paddy seeds. All this, in his family’s six-acre farm in Tamil Nadu’s Tiruvanamalai district.
It seems as if he’s been farming and selling paddy for decades. But it’s only been six years.
Before he became a farmer, Lenin was a corporate employee in Chennai, with two degrees and a good salary.
Life has only become harder in the last 10 years (A thread)
India's poorest homes continue to rely on minor forest produce like mahua and tendu leaves, along with the assured Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee (MGNREGA) programme.
As they prepare for voting today in the General Elections 2024, Adivasi villagers here in Arattondi village say their lives have only become harder in the last 10 years...