INDIA: Chandrapu and Gadchilroli districts, Maharashtra
Over half of the 1.8 million people in the central Indian district of Chandrapur try to eke out a living through subsistence farming. Yet many can’t meet even their basic needs. Here, one in five are “tribals,” indigenous farmers whose day-to-day existence is a struggle against poverty and discrimination. They are threatened by a poorly-designed forest policy that pits conservation against tribals’ rights and has led to widespread illegal evictions by powerful elites, wrongful arrests, and other abuses. The judiciary is largely indifferent to tribals’ complaints, and local government officials are considered by many to be corrupt and ineffective. Government programs to alleviate suffering and bring justice to tribal communities are rarely implemented.
Yet in these small, remote districts of central India, life is changing for the rural poor as indigenous farmers organize to demand change. Due in part to organizations such as Elgar, there is a growing movement of tribals and other rural poor mobilizing to recover land, and gain freedom from bonded labor and violence.
In 1999, Shamrik Elgar emerged as a popular response to the history of repression against tribals and the rural poor. Shamrik Elgar (The Marching Army of Working People) works to empower thousands of tribals and other rural poor to fight for their land through grassroots organizing, human rights education, and legal aid. They work in tandem with Elgar Pratisthan (The Foundation for Marching Army), a locally-based development organization, to pressure government and local police to enact reforms and change abusive practices. Internationally-honored activist Paromita Goswami founded and directs both organizations.
Elgar has helped hundreds of rural informal laborers to negotiate fair wages by strengthening their human rights knowledge base and bargaining skills. Elgar has challenged discrimination, accessed government programs for the poor, and campaigned for compensation for land that the government has appropriated from farmers without justification. Elgar has successfully halted evictions of many tribals off forest land and is now mobilizing these communities to gain land ownership and challenge pervasive harassment and violence from non-tribals. In 2005, Elgar aided in restoring land to over 190 indigenous farmers. The organization is currently working to return to their homes an additional 460 families who were forcibly removed from their land.
Working with Samarthan, another Fund grantee, Elgar compelled police to raid an industrial factory which was holding 170 youth (ages fourteen to twenty-five) in bondage and appalling conditions in western Maharashtra. With the help of the labor department, and despite considerable threats and harassment, Elgar forced the employer to pay minimum and overtime wages, filed charges against the company and helped the youths return to their villages and schools.
Each of Elgar’s victories erodes the culture of corruption, harassment, and fatalism in this region of Maharashtra, the second most populous state in India. “Through organizing alone we can bring in long term change, by making democratic institutions respond to the needs of the poor and by making the voices of the poor heard in the corridors of power, ” says Goswami.
