On a hot, dusty highway some 70km from Delhi, a human column snakes its way towards the Indian capital carrying a unique message of defiance to the country's leaders: "Give us back our land."
Some 25,000 of India's poorest people -- tribal peoples, "untouchables" and landless laborers -- have stopped traffic for nearly three weeks on the road that links Delhi and Agra, home to the Taj Mahal. Headed by a group of chanting Buddhist monks, the marchers say they aim to shame the government into keeping its promise to redistribute land.
The human train has been eating, living and washing by the road since the beginning of the month and by the end of the week will arrive at the Indian parliament, vowing to remain a public embarrassment until the government relents. Last week three marchers were killed by a speeding lorry.
With fists and voices raised, the scene is a world away from Indian newspaper headlines about the country's new luxury goods market or its soaring stock markets. Nowhere is this process of concentrating wealth in a tiny segment of the population more visible than in the ground beneath Indians' feet.
India has one of most iniquitous systems of land ownership in the world. Last week India's biggest real estate baron made a paper fortune of US$1 billion in a single day.
Most of the marchers say their dire condition is because they have no deeds to their land. Unable to grow produce on their ancestral land and with no deed to access state welfare services, the villagers are now fighting a losing war against poverty.
"I haven't got any rights on my land," said Prem Bai from the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh. "I have got four boys and can hardly manage the family with few days' work laboring on others' fields. If we go to forests then the forest department arrests us."
Some say their land is being grabbed by local mafias and corrupt officials. Shikari Baiga, 25, says land his family was cultivating was grabbed by local officials to grow biofuels on.
"I was put in jail for one year for demanding our land back. Fourteen families lost 75 acres [30 hectares]. But they tell us: Where are your [deeds]? We can do nothing. That is why we are going to Delhi to get justice."
The march is the brainchild of veteran Gandhian P.V. Rajagopal, who built a name by persuading bandits in central India to lay down their arms in the 1970s.
Rajagopal says the human caravan is a warning shot.
Rajagopal says there is a rising tide of violence in the country as the poor "are being driven out of villages and slums in cities."
In the country's rush to industrialize, he said, "we've seen alarming examples of outsiders seizing land on vast scales while the local rural poor are denied land. The result will be bloodshed and violence on a massive scale unless the government acts."
The issue is increasingly an explosive one in India, where incomplete reforms have left much of the country in the hands of a few. Extreme leftwing groups have tapped the rising anger in rural areas to wage low-intensity guerrilla wars.
In March an attempt to hand over 9,000 hectares of farmland to big business ended in pitched battles and half a dozen villagers dead in Bengal.
Some say that the problem lies in the Indian state's indifference to its poorest people, the "tribals" and the Dalites, or "untouchables."
"There are 120 million people who have no rights in this country," said Balkrishna Renake, chairman of India's national commission for denotified and nomadic tribes. "They are still waiting in independent India for the right to vote, to have schools and teachers, and for their land."
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
HYPOCRISY? The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday asked whether Biden was talking about China or the US when he used the word ‘xenophobic’ US President Joe Biden on Wednesday called for a hike in steel tariffs on China, accusing Beijing of cheating as he spoke at a campaign event in Pennsylvania. Biden accused China of xenophobia, too, in a speech to union members in Pittsburgh. “They’re not competing, they’re cheating. They’re cheating and we’ve seen the damage here in America,” Biden said. Chinese steel companies “don’t need to worry about making a profit because the Chinese government is subsidizing them so heavily,” he said. Biden said he had called for the US Trade Representative to triple the tariff rates for Chinese steel and aluminum if Beijing was
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese