Dear Friends,
 
This is to draw your urgent attention to the ongoing land struggle in Kerala. The struggle by landless Dalits and Adviasis to gain ownership of land, which began on 4th August 2007, has completed 100 days in the southern plantation belt of Pathanamthitta. The movement, which began on 4th August 2007, is a fight to re-claim ownership of land that has been part of a long standing promise of the Government. To this end about 5000 families totalling around 24,000 people from different parts of the region have moved on to the Harrison Malayalam Private Ltd estate, building tents with poles and plastic sheets to establish the struggle front. The Chengara Land struggle therefore is about affirming the prior claim of these Dalits and Adivasis to land and hence to transfer legal ownership from the planters to the landless agitators. And hence the present agitation is an indication of the intense nature of the struggle.

By Ashok Mitra*. Translated from Bengali by Debarshi Das, Sanhati
(http://sanhati.com/articles/446/)

Till death I would remain guilty to my conscience if I keep mum about the happenings of the last two weeks in West Bengal over Nandigram. One gets torn by pain too. Those against whom I am speaking have been my comrades at some time. The party whose leadership they are adorning
has been the centre of my dreams and works for last sixty years.

 

The Pivotal Agent in the Fight against Global Warming

*By Walden Bello**, 6th October 2007


The developing world’s stance towards the question of the environment has often been equated with the pugnacious comments of former Malaysian Prime Minister Mohamad Mahathir, such as his famous lines at the Rio Conference on the Environment and Development in June 1992:

When the rich chopped down their own forests, built their poison-belching factories and scoured the world for cheap resources, the poor said nothing. Indeed they paid for the development of the rich. Now the rich claim a right to regulate the development of the poor countries…As colonies we were exploited. Now as independent nations we are to be equally exploited [i].

Mahathir has been interpreted in the North as speaking for a South that seeks to catch up whatever the cost and where the environmental movement is weak or non-existent. Today, China is seen as the prime exemplar of this Mahathirian obsession with rapid industrialization with minimal regard for the environment.

Sir,

1. When it is universally and unanimously agreed that, whatever the merits or demerits of the Indo-US nuclear deal, it has far reaching and long term implication for our country; what is the reason for this undue haste with which your government is seeking to operationalize it ?

2. What is the reason for such an important deal being signed and operationalised without consultation with the people of India and the Indian Parliament?

3. What is the rationale for your new found enthusiasm about the merits of nuclear energy, glossing over the fact that the deal assures only about 7-9 percent of India energy needs, that too by 2020?