Lets Take A Stand Dalits Want The Land 92% of Scheduled Caste holding is marginal (0-2 hectares) of the 86.21% overall. The Agricultural Census of 2015-16 reported that Dalits operate only about 9% of the total area which is an average land holding of 0.78 hectares.
According to recent data published by the Census of India, 71% Dalits are landless labourers who work on a land they do not own. In the rural areas 58.4% Dalit households do not own land at all. This gets grimmer as we look at Dalit dominated states viz. Haryana, Punjab and Bihar where 85% Dalits in these states are living at the mercy of their landlords.
While more than 60% of landless Dalits in Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, Kerala, West Bengal, and Odisha yearn for a good future. And in most number of districts in Bihar, Haryana, Punjab, Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, and Kerala, 90% of Dalit farmers are agricultural labourers.
Therefore, the issues raised by director Pa Ranjith about landlessness is a question that every Dalit and non-Dalit student, professional, organizer, artist, scholar, businessperson, and politician should raise. It should be on the tongue and mind of every conscious citizen.
The Legal recourse available to Dalits are unbounded, however, its implementation remains questionable. Since 1961 several laws have put ceiling anywhere from 10-54 acres, and planning commission continuously pushed for land reforms since the 1950s. Still, Dalits do not own a piece of land.
Confining Ranjith to a dead discourse of a bygone era in Tamil Nadu is defeating the purpose. Ranjith expressed a view about an issue that is pan-Indian, and central to the Constitutional ethos that abides by the preamble which promises a radical imagination of: justice in an unjust society, liberty in the wake of suppression of expression, equality amidst inequality and fraternity in a country divided over 7000 castes and sub-castes across all the religions.
[ Suraj Yengde studied in America. They have raised issues of caste discrimination in foreign countries. They come from Nanded area of Maharashtra and have studied law in England and South Africa. At this time he is a post doctoral fellow at Howard University in the United States.]