This website provides information on a noteworthy event taking place in Bihar, a state in North-Eastern India- The Bihar padyatra (march), which was launched on September 11th, 2001. The march will end on October 11th, 2001. During this time, some 100 land rights activists and poor farmers will walk through 120 villages, covering a distance of 500 km, to focus attention on the plight of landless and marginal farmers in Bihar. Eighty per cent of the people of Bihar are rural.

There are 12 million small farmers; seventy five percent are marginalized. Land rights are therefore a crucial issue. The walkers are following a non-violent, Gandhian, civil disobedience strategy that has been used in India to empower the poor and disadvantaged, for many decades. The Bihar padyatra is coordinated by Ekta Parishad (United Forum).
   
 
 

At the same time, in the province of Ontario, in Canada, Pat Love, a 74-year-old Canadian woman, is walking, with some supporters, from Ottawa, the capital of Canada, to Peterborough, a city 250 km away. She was moved to undertake her own padyatra when she heard the story of the farmers in Bihar. She is making the link between the situation of landless farmers in Bihar and the severe housing shortage in Ontario. The statistics are frightening. One in four tenant households – hundreds of thousands of renters – all over Ontario, is at the risk of homelessness.

   
 

*Inform yourself and others about the Bihar padyatra and land issues in India.
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Just send a message to this address and you will receive updates on the padyatra and backgrounders on the issues involved, by e-mail.

*Express solidarity with the Bihar padyatra - Join Pat's Padyatra - being organized by the Church of St. John the Evangelist in Ottawa. The march will be launched at the Ottawa City Hall on Tuesday, September 12, at 12.30 pm. The marchers will walk from Ottawa to Peterborough, with Pat Love in the lead. (You can walk just part of the way.)

For more information call the Love Walk hotline: (613) 232-4500 x22.

*Make a financial contribution towards the Bihar padyatra. Cheques should be addressed to Pragati Grameen Vikas Samity, and sent to them at Flat 207, 2nd floor, B-Block, Ranjan Palace, Jagriti Nagar, Ashiyana, Patna, India 400014;e-mail: ppgvs@dte.vsnl.net.in

Please do not send cheques addressed to Ekta Parishad as these cannot be used. Thanks!

If you take action, let us know. Write to indialink@sapcanada.org
 
 
*The photographs of people in India, seen on these pages, were taken during the Madhya Pradesh Padyatra in 1999-2000.
 

The Bihar Padyatra

The walk was successfully launched on September 11th, 2001, in Bihar India. Bihar Padyatra off to a good start! Padyatra a major breakthrough - a report from the field.

Roughly, there will about five meetings a day in different villages - with the local leaders, government officials, politicians and local people, to express local land concerns. A key problem is that some people have the land claim but no land and some people have land, but no legal land claim. These are the kind of issues that will be raised daily. The walkers will halt in a village every night. They will stay in people’s homes and the villagers will cook chapatis (Indian bread) or rice and lentils for them. No money is given to these villagers; they do the work out of good spirit. To receive updates about the Bihar padyatra and backgrounders on the issues involved, send a message to indialink@sapcanada.org Ideally, please identify your organization or interest.

Click here for a map of Bihar/India and the padyatra route

Pat's Padyatra - Love Walk

People concerned with serious social problems in Ontario and India gathered on the plaza of Ottawa City Hall on September 12, 2001, to launch a protest Solidarity Walk from Ottawa to Peterborough. Ottawa's 74-year-old Pat Love began the first stage of her 250-kilometre walk on Highway 7, on September 13, 2001. The walk is designed to spotlight the problem of thousands caught in Ontario's growing social housing crisis and the plight of millions of landless, downtrodden farmers in the Indian state of Bihar.

Pat is inviting others to join her for as long as they are able. Walking about 20 kilometres a day, along the side of Highway 7, she expects to reach Peterborough for a ceremonial welcome on September 29.

The send-off ceremony took place at City Hall in Ottawa, at 12:30 p.m. on Tuesday, September 12, 2001. The project is organized by the Church of St. John the Evangelist in Ottawa. Both St. John's and the Primate's World Relief and Development Fund of the Anglican Church of Canada are supporting the Bihar march which will mobilize hundreds of thousands of people on the issue of land rights. The walk is one of several international solidarity initiatives. Others are scheduled in Britain, France, and Switzerland.

Click here for photographs. Click here for a calendar of the walk.
Click here for Love Walk diary. Click here for Love Walk finale in Peterborough.

For more information about the walk contact the Love Walk hotline: (613) 232-4500 x22.

   
 

The issue of inequitable access to resources and the denial of human rights and basic necessities is an issue of global relevance. The need to speak out about and take action on the growing gap between the haves and have-nots, in a fast globalizing world, is urgent.

This is the issue that the Bihar padyatra is tackling head on. It is using effective and time-tested Gandhian civil disobedience strategies, which people elsewhere can learn from, and use in their own organizing and movement building for progressive social change.

There are many Canadians who suffer because of inequitable access to various kinds of resources: housing, education, income, health services as well as land. Canadians also face discrimination based on race, ethnicity, gender, class, sexual preference, ability/disability, and so on.

Some Canadians have already made the connection between injustice in Bihar and Ontario. Jill Carr Harris is a Canadian working with Ekta Parishad in India. She brought news of the Bihar padyatra to Canada and inspired Pat Love. You will find information about Pat’s Padyatra which goes from Ottawa to Peterborough, on this page. The focus here is on the social housing crisis in Ontario.

Other reasons to get involved:

The plight of the small and marginal farmers needs attention.

Bihar is one of the many focal points for the small arms trade in South Asia.

Canada's development assistance policy needs to place food security and agriculture more directly on its agenda.