Acharaya Rammurthy, eminent scholar and long time Gandhian worker, blessed the padayatris. Reminiscing on his involvement with the Vinobha Bhave and J.P. Narayan’s land reform movements, he felt that it was now for present generations to continue and complete the work they had started. (Bhave and Narayan are renowned social activists in the Gandhian tradition.) Octogenarian Gandhian, Thakur Das Bang, appealed to all people of Bihar to join and support this effort and said that he was proud to be walking with the padyatra for the first two days.

Over 200 social activists, prominent personalities and media persons from Bihar and other parts of India, as well as Switzerland, UK, France and Canada joined the march. The padyatra, also led by Ekta Parishad-Bihar leaders, Pradip Priyadarshi and Raavindra Pratap, will pass through Nawada, Nalanda, Gaya and Jehanabad, to culminate in a mass meeting in Patna, capital of Bihar, on J.P. Narayan’s birth anniversary on October 11.

One of the objectives of the padyatra is to put pressure on the government to take steps for ensuring that the nearly 4 lakh (a lakh equals 100,000) acres of land will be redistributed to the poor and landless.

During the first jan sunwai (public hearing), 57 landless people of the mushar community spoke of their troubles. The headman of Khalyianpur said that there were 150 mushar families in his village. (Musahar, meaning, "rat eaters," is a low caste group that has suffered so acutely from food scarcity that they are known to eat mice and rats.) Almost all the land in Khalyianpur belongs to the village elite. Since the mushars receive less than the minimum wage as landless labourers, they have to migrate to other provinces and earn a living doing hard labour.

Similarly, at the second hearing, 327 persons from Tisrama village demanded that the government provide them land since agriculture was the only source of livelihood in the area. As the march moved on, people continued to echo these charges of landlessness and low wages.

Besides the issues of land, the aim of the padyatra is to "change the [negative and violent] image of Bihar and bring together all the processes and forces of change," said Rajgopal. The land rights campaign will also focus on problems of the homeless. It hopes to propose some strategies to end violence by highlighting its root causes and pressurizing the state to bring about radical changes. Though many people have been cynical about positive changes, Rajgopal feels there is no room for hopelessness and that Ekta Parishad will be able to convince people about this, through its on-going work. There are plans to carry out a padyatra in the neighboring state of Orissa, in 2002.


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