The Telegraph (23 April 2009): Candidates from crushed land
From farm to factory, the forgotten in fray

23 April 2009: Cotton farmer Vamanrao Sadashivrao Chatap wants just one chance from voters to show the Congress and the BJP what farmers in Vidharba really need, and how they can be helped.

At 57, the father of two works from five in the morning to ten at night on his fields in eastern Maharashtra’s Chandrapur district, along with his wife.

But this year, he felt the need to step beyond those fields into electoral politics, seeking votes instead of rains.

“Sixty years after independence, thousands of my brothers on fields like mine are feeling compelled to commit suicide. The major parties make claims and promises but those are always half-hearted. I couldn’t take it any more,” said an animated Chatap, contesting as an Independent with a television set as his symbol.

Vidharba may be known nationally as the farm suicide belt of the country, but none of the major political parties in Maharashtra fielded a single farmer as their candidate from any of the ten constituencies here.

In Delhi, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has called independents “spoilers,” but to Chatap, it is parties like the Congress and the BJP which are spoiling the future of farmers.

The Congress led UPA announced massive bank loan waivers last year, but the impact of that announcement has been limited – most farmers borrow from money lenders – said Chatap.

“The loan waiver plan showed a complete lack of understanding of how farmers borrow in rural India. Perhaps, it is only a common farmer, not an “agriculturist,” who can understand our plight,” said Chatap, taking a dig at the occupation several city-based politicians cite on nomination forms to suggest links with rural India.

But Chatap isn’t alone in taking on the might of the major political parties in Maharashtra. He is merely a symbol of a larger sentiment of disgust with major political parties and their candidates silently finding expression in ordinary candidates contesting without either money or muscle to support them.

In the elite Mumbai South constituency where sitting Congress MP Milind Deora is battling suave corporate executive Meera Sanyal, a textile worker is quietly campaigning door to door for a broader definition of terrorism.

Brought up single-handed by a vegetable vendor mother, Suryakanth Shinge joined the garment industry as a worker in 1993 and worked with unorganised workers in conditions he describes as “inhuman.”

When workers asked for better conditions, the trade unions they turned to, run by major political parties, betrayed them. So Suryakanth and his fellow workers started their own sangathan (organisation) to battle for the rights of unorganised sector workers in South Mumbai.

“Is terrorism only what we saw in Mumbai on November 26 last year,” asked the Independent candidate fighting on a torch symbol.

“What about the policies that drive farmers to suicide, that aid exploitation of unorganised workers. Children suffer malnutrition because their father has been thrown out by a mill for protesting exploitation, or mother retrenched. Are these children not victims of terror.” The 41-year old candidate, supported by civil society groups like the Lok Raj Sangathan, lives in a chawl on Mumbai’s Ambedkar Sadan Currey Road, and has signed an affidavit allowing voters to recall him for non-performance.

“There is a need to renew the democratic process. Today, ordinary people are reduced merely to voting machines who are asked to choose a “lesser evil” once every five years, from among candidates who don’t represent them,” Suryakanth said.

Around 200 km east of Mumbai, 38-year old Maruti Bhapkar is waiting for the day he can wear slippers again.

This activist decided five years back that he would walk barefoot, even in the singing mid summer heat, till he manages to bring a “substantive” change in the lives of deprived farmers, workers and malnourished children.

“I want to feel the pain that a farmer in Vidharba, a retrenched employee in Mumbai or Pune, a malnourished child suffers, each time I walk over a pebble, or in the heat,” said Bhapkar.

The 38-year old is the only Independent councillor in Pimpri-Chinchwad, a township on the outskirts of Pune controlled by the Nationalist Congress Party.

Now he is contesting – again as Independent – from the Maval Lok Sabha constituency that consists of talukas carved out from Raigad and Pune districts.

His single most important agenda is scrapping the SEZ law that according to him is “illegal.”

“There is a land ceiling law that bars farmers from owning land beyond a limit. But the SEZ law allows industries to purchase thousands of hectares of land of which some can be used for real estate as well. How can the country have one set of rules for farmers and another set for industry,” he questioned.

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Chandrapur went to polls on April 16, Maval goes to polls on April 23, and Mumbai-South on April 30.