Interview with Ramesh Cheemachanahalli, core committee member, Bhoo-swadhina Virodhi Horata Samiti on the historic Devanahalli struggle.
Q. The Karnataka government has withdrawn the Devanahalli land acquisition notification after 1198 days of struggle by the farmers. What is your message to the people of Karnataka?
We are delighted about the victory. It is not just our victory but of the people of entire Karnataka. Our message is that, if there is agriculturally productive land, it has to be fiercely defended. There is no alternative to agriculture. Industries and agriculture have to go hand in hand not one shadowing the other. Society is not stagnant water and development keeps happening which is well and good, but changes which are brought in by bulldozing the lives of people against their will must be opposed and land acquisitions shouldn’t happen like real estate business. If the government does it, concerned farmers have to come together and resist such moves. Build movements which is inclusive of everyone, only then these struggles can achieve victory.
Q. Can you tell us more about the Devanahalli struggle?
The preliminary notification for land acquisition was issued in August 2021. It is only in first week of January, 2022 that we received notices from the Government. Once we got the notices, we panicked at the very thought of losing our land. This was not just a few farmers; majority of the affected farmers in 13 villages felt this way, but at that time they were not in touch with each other. In my village Murthy, Mukund and I were discussing what to do. We knew that we did not want to give up our ancestral lands, but we did not know how to save them. Initially we tried various ways, we discussed our issue with Clifton D’Rozario [CPI(ML) Liberation State Secretary] contemplating approaching the Courts, but he advised us to focus on building a movement against acquisition rather, since that is where we stood the best chance of victory. In the beginning we concentrated on approaching the authorities by writing to them about our serious objections to the land acquisition including writing to the Deputy Commissioner of our district. We also got in touch with lawyer Siddharth who had fought to protect the land rights of Dalits in our area. He helped in co-ordinating and getting us in touch with people across the 13 villages. We came in touch with Karalli Srinivas who have been guiding us throughout the protest. We then organised a meeting with representatives from 13 villages, where we firmly resolved to fight to save our lands. We began our protest by burning the notices issued by the Karnataka Industrial Areas Development Board. That is how our movement began. In February that year, we held a massive tractor rally from Channarayapatna to the office of the Deputy Commissioner, during which we faced severe police repression. Despite that our rally was a massive success and hundreds of farmers participated. We then got in touch with state leaders such as Mavalli Shankar and Badgalpura Nagendra who came to the rally. We met Chukki Nanjundaswamy, Bayyareddy, and other state leaders of Samyukta Horata.
Q. It was a long struggle, spanning more than 39 months. What were the challenges to the protracted struggle and how did you navigate them?
What was deep-rooted among the farmers was that it was not going to be easy to revoke the decision. The gathering at our indefinite protest site and various programmes began increasing rapidly as farmers started developing more and more confidence. There were very few farmers willing to give land for genuine reasons of poverty. There were real estate agents and other vested political interests working since day one to convince the people.
Still we were able to overcome these challenges in our area in this battle to save our lands. Also, there was police repression against the movement. During a preventive detention against us, my friend Pramod suffered a serious eye injury at the hands of police. Many organisations and individuals came in support of the struggle through Samyukta Horata especially since the June 25 “Devanahalli Chalo”. This gave us a big boost. Scores of national-level organisations came in our support. All sorts of farmers, leftist and Dalit organisations came in our support.
Q. Tejasvi Surya, the BJP MP, criticised Siddaramaiah for dropping the land acquisition. What do you have to say about this?
For the BJP development means some large companies coming and setting up industries. This is contrary to the development of the people. Recently they waived off a tax of Rs. 34,000 crore to Reliance company, whereas the total loan of farmers of Karnataka is estimated around Rs. 60,000 cr. The same Government does not provide any loan waiver, subsidies for seed, irrigation, and agricultural equipment to increase production. If you better the living conditions of the farmers they can contribute to the GDP. If the government wants farmers to compete with industries in paying direct taxes, let them first ensure that regular income is generated by agricultural labourers and small landholding farmers then we can talk about farmers paying income tax.
