How a twin village made Karnataka drop Posco project

With the Karnataka Government relenting to farmers' agitation against acquisition of their land for the South Korean company Posco's mega steel project, villagers of Jantli-Shirur two of the four locations where the project was expected to come up, are rejoicing their victory.

What sets people of the twin villages, Jantil and Shirur apart is the incredible unity and cooperation that binds their residents, cutting across caste, age and gender, and the immense knowledge and foresight they have of the consequences of the land acquisitions. While villagers at another location, Halligudi were contemplating giving away their land, villagers at Jantil-Shirur remained unshakeably firm on their decision not to give away land.

Though located just a couple of kilometres from each other, the villages show distinct characteristics. After an hour at Halligudi, one goes back savouring the hospitality and softness of rural India leaving the visitor aching to be back with their roots and experience ‘real' Indian culture, while a couple of minutes at Jantli-Shirur is enough to drive an urban-bred person away from the rough, brazen, ‘uncultured' rural folk, who don't hesitate to punctuate their sentences with the most repulsive Kannada slang.

“We went to Halligudi and Mevundi and educated farmers there and explained the situation to them,” says Mr C.R.Budhihala, a farm-leader who has seen the benefits of the cooperative movement. Mr Budhihala brings with him the experience of trading onion harvested from all farms near the village on behalf of the farmers and this experience has helped in mobilising villagers for the protest.

Gravity of situation

Mr Budhihala says that several villagers from Halligudi own lands in Jantli-Shirur and that almost half of Halligudi village was initially willing to give their land away. At Jantli-Shirur, however, when the acquisitions were announced, the entire village came together to fight for their land.

“Villagers at Halligudi and Mevundi hadn't realised the gravity of the situation, and were considering selling their lands,” he says. Understandably, many farmers being uneducated, are ignorant to the long-term consequences of the land acquisitions and allow themselves to be lured by the money and easy jobs of security guards or sweepers.

Mr Budhihala says that over the last few days, he and a group of farmers went around the other villages and showed them how successful Jantli-Shirur was and what other farmers might miss out. Mr Budhihala says that all kinds of pulses, onion, potatoes and chillies were being grown in Jantli-Shirur and that even in the dry season, each acre of their land was worth Rs 4.55 lakh. The yield of onion is fantastic and we earn about Rs 3 lakh per lorry load of onion, he said. He also spoke about how many farmers from Jantli-Shirur who worked at other farms as labourers picked up their best practices of farming, implemented them at Jantli-Shirur and saw a great increase in yield.

“We told them all this and spoke to farmers there about self-sufficiency and several other benefits of owning lands and farming as against working for factories, “ Mr Budhihala says.

“They may give us money now, but that will be spent in a few months. It is not an aasthi we can give away to our grandchildren,” says Ms Shivamma, who had a unique demand that the government must approach the women for their signatures even if lands are in their husbands' names. “We are the owners of the land and don't want to stoop down to levels of servants of factory owners. If the men aren't willing to fight, we women will,” she adds.

Such is the awareness of farmers at Jantli, and their dedication to farming, and the strength of the cooperation they share, that they spent days trying to educate other farmers and mobilise crowds for the protest. And yes, their dedication has paid off.

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