[Reader-list] Chengara inching towards open conflict as talks fail

[Anivar Aravind]

Chengara inching towards open conflict as talks fail

Pioneer News Service | Pathanamthitta

Horror filled the more than 3,000 makeshift sheds of over 7,000 Dalits
and Adivasis agitating in the rubber estates among the Chengara hills
in Pathanamthitta district on Monday with the meeting of District
Collector PC Sanil Kumar with trade unions blocking the roads to the
agitation camp.

The meeting was held as a last attempt to make the workers withdraw
from their move to march into the estate on September 3 to forcefully
evict the agitators from there. With this, a conflict which could
gather any imaginable dimensions became a possibility in the rubber
estates, where the agitators have been camping since August 4, 2007
demanding land and livelihood. The District Collector has stated that
the workers' would not be allowed to take out the march.

The workers, who had been blocking the entry points to the estate
since August 3 in a determined bid to smoke the agitators out, are now
preparing to flush the Dalits and Adivasis out of the camp with the
collective physical force of all the workers registered in the trade
unions in the entire Pathanamthitta district.

With the agitators preferring death to free passage out of the camp if
they do not get land and livelihood, an intense conflict on Wednesday
has now become a discomforting possibility. In the context, the
district administration is considering various options including
clamping prohibitory orders in the area.

Stating that the workers would march into the agitation camp on
Wednesday as decided earlier, the estate workers, demanding their jobs
back in the estate, the trade union representatives told the district
administration that the meeting was held 'very late'. Trade union
leaders held that there was no meaning in holding discussions with the
workers after the authorities adopted a position favourable to the
agitators.

The estate workers, who claimed that they had lost their jobs in the
estate held by Harrison Malayalam Plantations Ltd after the agitators
encroached upon it, had been blocking the entry point of the camp
since August 3, the first anniversary of the agitation in Chengara.
The blockade had become so intense that even the local people turned
against the workers due to their unethical methods of checking the
passersby.

With the blockade continuing, the situation in the camp had
deteriorated as the agitators were unable to get food or water or even
medicines to treat the sick. Following this, reports came out of the
camp that starvation and contagious diseases were spreading through
the camp.

In this situation, the workers ten days back lifted their blockade
'temporarily' to let the agitators leave the camp before September 3.
But even then the workers refused to allow even health workers to
reach medical help to the estate.

There are reports that the condition of the agitators has deteriorated
further with the incidence of diseases going up and starvation
becoming more intense in the context of the supply lines being cut off
by the workers. The estate workers had even blocked Muslim League
workers who had tried to give food and water to the agitators.

Rights workers are holding the CPI(M)-led LDF Government responsible
for the situation in Chengara. They say that the Government had taken
a stand that supported the workers with the clear intention of getting
the agitators out of the camp somehow. The CPI(M) Ministers, including
Chief Minister VS Achuthanandan had, from the very beginning, adopted
a position that the Dalits' stir was actually against the Government.
This, and the readiness showed by CPI(M) trade union CITU to lead the
workers' blockade, had given confidence to the workers to act against
the agitators.

However, the Government was forced to talk to Sadhu Jana Vimochana
Samyuktha Vedi, which had been spearheading the Dalits' agitation,
after the workers served the September 3 ultimatum on the agitators.
Scheduled Caste Welfare Minister AK Balan and Revenue Minister KP
Rajendran had talked to Vedi president Lhaha Gopalan and other leaders
in Thiruvananthapuram. The discussions held by District Collector
Sanil Kumar with the trade unions on Monday were part of the efforts
to avoid a physical confrontation between the workers and the
agitators.

The workers are claiming that they have been working in the estates
held by Harrison Malayalam and the agitation had caused the loss of
their jobs, which had led to their penury. But the Vedi says that this
is nothing but a lie. They say that the workers even otherwise did not
have any job in the estate as the Government had already asked the
plantation company to stop operations at the estate as the period of
land lease had already expired.



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"Ours is a battle not for wealth or for power.
It is a battle for freedom. It is a battle for the reclamation of
human personality."
- Dr BR Ambedkar
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