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Land Rights Day That the Community’s Collective Rights to be the Basis
The Land Rights Day was marked on the 11th of November 2009 at the Social Development Centre in Ranchi amids over a hundred participants from different peoples organisations from across districts of Jharkhand. It is in remembrance of the uprising against the plundering of traditional land rights of the Adivasi peoples of Jharkhand, over a hundred years ago when the colonial government had to go in a compromise by making a protective legislation and enacting the Chotanagpur Tenancy Act 1908 on this day.
Even though this legislation has been weakened over the years, more particularly after the independence of the country, it still hold the basic spirit of non-transfer of the Adivasi land to non-Adivasi. A few other protective legislations though have been enacted but still the land transfer remains the very basic issue for the Jharkhandi Adivasi. On this day it was said by the Customary Chief Mangal Rai Jaria “in the land territories of Chutia and Nagu Munda –in Chotanagpur traditionally inherited and developed– first the land lords at the colonial time and today the government has taken over the control. What we need today to acknowledge and claim is our collective rights of the community.” Davender Nath Champia, the former Legislative Assembly, Deputy Speaker of Bihar, giving a brief over view of the development of the legislation in the post independent India urged the Adivasi communities to work towards community empowerment and be informed of our rights to claim them. Interestingly added to is was the point which one of the speakers said that the land records and documents’ language and the rights it spells need to be understood by women and their youth.
It is while the state’s administrative system today is becoming more and more difficult for the common people to have excess and avail its services, with corruption creeping in to the core if it, it is the civil society, the village councils and intellectuals should be the ones to take initiative towards rectifying and reconstruction said some other speakers. It becomes even more important when our own elected representatives in the legislation become a part of the system it is even more important to make them accountable to the people who they represent.
Participants from different peoples’ movements, basic of it being the land rights, also put forward their concern of the importance of land rights to be understood in the present context as more and more memorandum of understandings between the state government and the multinational companies are being signed. Including the areas take over for such expansion under the Special Economic Zones.
A draft resolution was also proposed towards the end of the occasion, and will be sent to different organisations including those who participated in the program to add their comments to it before it is finalized. The draft resolution includes common position on the combating the impact of industrialisation and expansion of corporatisation in to these areas with need for more and more land. Also that international legal instrument is made applicable in the context to protect the land rights of the Adivasi- indigenous and the marginalized communities.
Bineet Mundu Land Rights Day Organising Committee, Ranchi
B.I.R.S.A. Land Desk B-6 Abhilasha Apartment, 11A Purulia Road, Ranchi - 834001 Jharkhand (INDIA) Telfax: + 91 651 2532035/ 2531874/ 2532104 email: birsa.landdesk@gmail.com www.birsa.in |
