India’s marching poor end their protest

NEW DELHI: Tens of thousands of poor Indians fighting for land reform ended their protest march to New Delhi on Thursday after signing an agreement with the central government, a campaign spokesman said.
The protesters — mostly low-caste laborers, small-scale farmers and marginalized tribal people — gathered from across India eight days ago in the town of Gwalior, intending to march 350 kilometers (220 miles) to the capital.
Aneesh Thillenkery, spokesman for the main organizing activist group Ekta Parishad (Unity Forum), told AFP the group had stopped the march “because the government has signed an agreement with us.”
According to a copy of the document seen by AFP, the central government has pledged to draft a national land reforms policy and push state governments, which control land distribution, to help marginalized communities.
The proposed measures include the provision of agricultural land to India’s vast numbers of rural, landless poor, whose condition has improved little despite the country’s booming economy.
India’s constitution does not allow the central government to carry out land reform without the consent of elected officials in the country’s states.
The central government also promised to pressure state governments to provide legal aid to anyone from the lower castes or tribal communities who is involved in court cases over their access to land.
The clash between India’s industrial expansion and its agricultural communities has become a test of how the government deals with the development that is transforming Asia’s third-largest economy.
Some 73 percent of India’s billion-plus population live off the land, but major industrial projects — seen as vital by the government to create jobs — are frequently delayed or even abandoned due to land acquisition problems.
October’s march was the second since 2007 when 25,000 poor and debt-ridden farmers traveled the same route on foot from the town of Gwalior in Madhya Pradesh state to press for land rights.