Praja Sankalpa Yatra Diary, Day 122: Neeru Chettu A Ruse By TDP To Forcibly Acquire Land?

Gudipudi, Guntur district: The Neeru-Chettu initiative of the TDP government had a more sinister objective, I learnt today. People told me during the course of my Padayatra that TDP leaders and sand mafia dons aligned with the ruling party, were using it to forcibly acquire land in villages. In the village, Nandigam, an old woman, Rentapalem Kumari, said to me: “Our land has been taken away from us. For 60 years we had been cultivating crops on three acres, which TDP leaders recently snatched away from us under the Neeru-Chettu scheme. They will pay for their sins,” she said with unconcealed anger. Alla Jagayya of the same village told me that the TDP leaders grabbed 12 acres of land by the lake and after mining the sand, sold it. “Their greed knows no limits and they sell everything,” he added.

The Sarpanch of Gudipudi revealed another fact. He said that for three generations, Dalit families there had been cultivating their crops over 60 acres of land. This land has now been forcibly acquired by the TDP under the Neeru-Chettu scheme only because the ruling party decided to act vengefully against those it viewed as supporters of YSRCP.

The agenda of the TDP leaders becomes very evident. They are out to grab land, sell sand, water and all possible resources they can lay their hands on. Even Dalit properties have not been spared. These mafia gangs will pay for their sins soon. The tears of the poor are not shed in vain.

A group of farm workers along with her children met me by the Chilli fields along the way. I asked them if their children had not gone to school to which they replied that they were migrant workers from a village near Mantralayam. “We came here as there's no scope for work there. Even after toiling there for over 2 months last year under the Employment Guarantee Scheme, we did not get a penny. Out of sheer compulsion, we had to migrate and come here in search of livelihood. We had to withdraw our children from their school,” they said. I was distressed to hear their tale of suffering and to learn that the employment guarantee scheme itself became a source of migration when it was meant to prevent it. What is the point in having a scheme in place when the Government is callous in its implementation?

I took part in the BC welfare meeting near Gudipudi. People from the BC community poured out their woes to me and told me how Chandrababu Naidu used them as pawns in his political games. They expressed their anguish over his deceitful ways. Chandrababu thinks of us only at the time of elections and discards us right after. We won't get carried away by his sweet talk this time around. I posed a question to Chandrababu at this meeting. "Did your 40 years of political experience teach you to let down BCs or backstab people?" I said this with a lot of anger. My fury stemmed from thousands of complaints which I had received from members and representatives of the BC communities during the course of my padayatra.

I have a question for the chief minister. Don’t you think denying wages to those who were employed under the Employment Guarantee Scheme is inhuman? Are you not responsible for the migration of those who are deprived of opportunities in their own villages and who are not being paid under the employment guarantee scheme for the work they are doing?