Munnar evictions goes into top gear !!

It was quite good to see VS, CM of Kerala, going to Munnar today and personally overseeing the evictions processes. Today it was one of the big guns in Munnar, Tata Tea. Tata Tea has some 1,25,000 acres in Munnar under tea plantation. Actually the land was under the custordy of Tata, but two years back they have handed over the possession of these estates to their employees as they found that managing these estates were against their core competencies and was becoming more of a a liability than a resource. 50,000 acres of these do not have proper records and from a long time Tata has been occupying these lands.

The action today was spectacular in that about 2000 acres of this has been reclaimed from past Tata employees and govt has planted it's board there. Tata in a move to minimise damage has in turn said that those lands were govt lands and not occupied by Tata at all, which is not true.

A major blow for Tata, this is the best action by VS ever since the evictions stated. In due course of time more land being held by Tata for which Tata does not possess records, will be reclaimed.

Even though this smells of some vindictive action against big businesses, unless this was done the poor farmer in Munnar would never have been able to realise his dream of owning land in Munnar, everything was with the big boss, Tata. Under the shade of such big businesses the pinarayi faction in CPM has owned land in the name of farming and converted that to big tourist homes and party offices.

Like a very benevolent big brother Tata was giving employment to the poor people of Munnar on the land originally owned by these poor landless labourers. What an irony ?

In Kerala only such land ownership issues come under public scrutiny and action taken on it. Consider the other states inn the country. The poor still remain poor and the rich continue to grow rich !!

Eventhough the land no more belongs to Tata, it is being pulled into the limelight and it's reputation is getting damaged,. As the politicians see, there is lot of political mileage in regaining land from the Tatas than any poor peasant or shopkeeper..

In Bengal, the CPM govt is trying to get land for Tata at Nandigram while in Kerala CPM govt is trying to take away land from the Tatas !!

george..