Update from the Dharna in Mehendiganj
Phone Conversation with Nandlal on April 18, 2006
Nandlal:
"The last two nights have been quite bad for us. We were really troubled because of the rain and wind – the tent broke, people got wet and in general it really disturbed our whole program. Today the sun has come out and we are working on drying out all the things that were soaked in the rain. The wind caused the tent poles to break and all this will take quite sometime to repair. In fact I am right now working with some people to fix part of the damage. The rain and wind was un-seasonal and totally unexpected. The strong winds caught the farmers by surprise, resulting in a huge loss to them. The farmers had just about harvested 40% of the crop, and even the portion that was harvested had become wet because of the rain.
As such the dharna is coming along fine. Yesterday only 20-25 people turned up because people were inconvenienced by the rain. Farmers had to return to the fields to take care of the damage done by the wind and rain. Unfortunately yesterday evening the wind picked up again and caused more damage. There is a mango-grove close by and half of a tree broke because of the strong winds and fell only about 20 meters from us, else it could have caused a lot of damage and maybe injuries too.
While we were being struggling with the rain and wind, a car comes from the plant and it stops and waits. The windows of the car are all rolled up and after waiting for sometime it takes a U-turn and returns to the plant. It seemed to me that they had come to see if the rain and wind had managed to break up the dharna.
Rajendra Singh, (“Water Man”) Magsaysay Award winner is going to come on April 28th and 29th to Mehdiganj and Varanasi. Two students from Mumbai should arrive by evening. One of them is Satish and I don’t remember the girl’s name. I will give you the details once they arrive. Medha Pathkarji suggested to them that they should come to Mehdiganj.
Regarding the dharna, we had a good program on the occasion of Ambedkar Jayanti. I gave the details to Sanjeev. Also people at Sarv Seva Sangh (an organization started by Gandhiji and Vinobaji) held a fast in Benaras in support of the Mehdiganj struggle and Narmada Bachao Andolan. We are currently working with other organizations trying to get support for our campaign.
We had a huge public hearing (public awareness campaign) in Varanasi talking about Right to Work and Right to Food. We had invited government officials who are working in this area and told them about our problems. They were quite receptive to our concerns and there has been a good response from the government after that. This has helped in getting some good work done. This event was attended by Sandeep, Arundhati and Sanat.
Hope you people are working on doing something for the shareholders meeting of Coca-Cola. I have a few points to ask Coca-cola when you call in tomorrow –
* Coke claims that water level has not gone down because of its presence: Coca-Cola claims it is part of the community. If it really feels this, then it should stop using the ground-water. Water has already become real scarce even though the peak of summer is not yet here. Coke is doing business. It can move and setup a plant somewhere else, but where can we people go - we have to live here, we don’t have any other option.
* Coke claims the dharna is being organised by few with personal political ambitions: I challenge them to take a door-to-door survey and then they must do whatever is the mandate of the people, be it to continue operations ( and then our dharna will come to an end) or to leave Mehdiganj.
* Coke claims that water level has increased in the area since they have come: I ask Coke to discuss the figures from 2005-06. Zilla Panchayat and other local authorities have declared that the water level has fallen dangerously low (more than 72.6% of the water recharged during the monsoons have been used up - anything above 70% usage is considered critical) and summer is not yet here.
I believe that basically all people are good. But it is the government which creates a bad image of the people. For example, in India and Pakistan, the government keeps saying that the other country is our enemy and this makes people think that they do not like people from the other country. I think that Americans are nice people but people are forming a bad opinion on Americans based on their experience with Coke. You should speak to Americans there and tell them about this issue and ask them to question Coke about it.
We run 10 school centers, where we provide the stationary, books and also need to pay the teachers. In 2001 Asha Chicago started supporting us. Six months back Gaurav, a volunteer with them visited us. We wanted support for other activities we were doing along with education, but Asha Chicago said that they could only support us in the education component.
There is the Kalamanch which organizes street plays and dramas to create awareness. The role of the Kalamanch has gone up as we have now moved from just education to this whole movement. We are also trying to spread awareness about the Right to Food, the Right to Work and the Right to Information campaigns in about 20-25 villages around here. We are trying to fight corruption in the local administration. We also try and make sure that government schemes like the mid-day meal, food at the aanganwadis, ration-card allotments, etc are implemented well.
We have 2-3 volunteers who go out into the villages and organize youth meetings. There are 3-4 full time volunteers who are working on organizing the dharna. We have two vehicles shuttling people, especially women from the villages to the dharna site. We are also thinking of getting a telephone line and an internet connection.
Mahendraji is the coordinator of the kalamanch. He is a very good singer, very good actor and an old volunteer with us. In fact I taught him in the school we were running here in 1994. He went and studied further, then worked in the saree business and is now working with the kalamanch. "