India: Land, Life, Learning

CECOEDECON brought into view the core of humanity, where women, men and children fight the daily battles of poverty, water shortage, malnutrition, and patriarchy, and, with the help of the inspiring NGO, come out with community-driven smiles and conviction.  Too often in my travels have I seen NGOs powered by individuals with the selfish desire for selfless action.  COCOEDCON rids pretense from the equation, not only focusing on the needs of one issue, but on any issue at the forefront of human well-being in Rajasthan. 

The Land Reform act in India was meant to give land to the people who really had a connection with it not absentee land owners. The Zamidars were a group of aristocrats in India with large land holdings; their land was worked by many people, both sharecroppers and tenant farmers.  This system was interrupted when the British colonizers came in but still held strong during colonization. The land continued to be passed down through hereditary lines during colonization.

            Farming used to be the main occupation of people hundreds of years ago all over the world including India. Most people were tied to the land through the British colonization of India starting with the East India Trading company, colonial British changed farming by asking people to give them some of what they produced, a tax. By doing this people now had to produce more food than they were used to to be able to have enough after some was given away.

Kerala is a lesson to all of us, should be the lesson! First to Keralites who escape Kerala and come back with a foreign capital to build tourists resorts, and all of those who cannot stand relative equality; to Kerala’s plantation owners who have cash-crops and only cash-crops on their plantations, who do not feed their local community, who use the relics of casts and feudal and/or colonial system to exploit their workers just as some owners of resorts.