Need for a concerted effort

WITH THE AGITATION by the various organisations representing the tribal people across Kerala leading to the formation of a Grand Council of Tribals, the issue relating to land rights to the tribal population (hitherto restricted to Wayanad district alone) has reached a point where the established political parties will have to shed their own apathy over it. It may be true that the outfits now championing the cause are in no mood to let parties across the spectrum even associate themselves with the agitation. And Ms. C. K. Janu, who seems to have emerged as the leader of the tribal people, has been expressing her animosity towards the mainstream political platforms in such a fashion that it smacks of an intention to deny any role to political parties in the agitation; Ms. Janu's attempts, in this sense, are to challenge the party system, a concept so integral to the democratic fabric. And this certainly is a cause for concern. It is time that the various leaders involved in mobilising the tribal people to set up camps around the Chief Minister, Mr. A. K. Antony's official residence in the State capital realise the dangers involved in such a strategy and the rhetoric of anti-politics for the movement as such.

It is indeed a fact that Ms. Janu's rhetoric finds acceptance among the agitating tribal people only because the various political parties in the State, including the CPI(M) and the CPI, did nothing in the past couple of decades to stop alienation of the tribal people. Apart from having failed to orchestrate the concerns of the poor tribals (who found the land that they believed to be their own being taken away by settlers from other parts of Kerala) the mainstream political parties are even guilty of siding with the settlers at times. It is obvious that they allowed themselves to be guided by concerns of electoral politics in the plains and were willing to trade off the interests of the tribal people in return for votes from elsewhere in the State. The developments in the past few months leading to the agitation that is on now, whether it be the form of the agitation or its content, are indeed a fallout of the sins committed by the mainstream Left in Wayanad district. If the agitating tribals now detest the CPI(M) and the CPI as much as they do the Congress, the two Left parties have their own leadership to blame. And for this very reason, the mainstream Left will have to indulge in serious introspection rather than calling those leading the protest names.

Be that as it may, the imperative for the A. K. Antony dispensation is to address the concerns of the agitating tribal people from a larger perspective. Apart from a debate as to whether the settlers should be allowed to alienate the rights of the tribal people to the land in the high ranges, there are several other issues that must draw the attention of the civil administration there. Such pointers that Wayanad district has lagged far behind than the rest of Kerala in such areas as access to education, primary health care and such other human development indices should now be redressed. There are also such concerns as abject poverty that prevails in the region and also the atrocities inflicted on the tribal women; there have been reports (based on clear evidence) in the media of a number of un- wed mothers from this region. It is necessary that all these concerns are addressed in a manner that those belonging to the political establishment in the State - the Congress and the Left parties in particular - agree to resist the temptation to reduce such issues into means to reach partisan political ends. Any further delay will only help vested interests to turn the agitating tribals to outfits aligned to the Sangh Parivar and lead to distortion of their demands on sectarian lines. This, indeed, was the experience from most other regions with a predominant tribal population.

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