Bullet train: Protests against Centre’s pet project in Gujarat and Maharashtra

Assuring Rs 1 lakh crore funds for the bullet trains, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe laid the foundation for the project along with Modi on Thursday. Along with the money, the Japanese PM has also promised huge Japanese investments in the Delhi-Mumbai Industrial Corridor (DMIC). While the inauguration ceremony occurred in Ahmedabad, farmers and tribes from different regions of Gujarat met district and Taluk officials to submit letters of protest.

The pet project of the BJP government would take away the dreams of farmers and villagers in the project area. The projects which are passing through the tribal belts of Maharashtra and Gujarat include the freight corridor, Mumbai-Ahmedabad bullet train and the Mumbai-Vadodara expressway. Thane, Dahanu, Palghar, Navsari, Valsad and the union territory of Dadra-Nagar Haveli etc are the tribal belts.

In Gujarat, more than 250 farmers’ representatives staged a one-day fast in Bavaliyari village of Ahmedabad district. The region comes under Dholera Special Investment Region (SIR). As the part of SIR, Modi has advocated a Japanese township around the industries and offices too.

The protests in various parts of the state were led by Khudut Samaj Gujarat (KSG). KSG president Jayesh Patel wrote a letter to Abe voicing he would like to "take this opportunity to vent farmers' anger and utmost opposition to the relentless onslaught of ‘developmental projects’ that you and your government are subjecting us and our livelihoods to".

"These are wreaking a deadly impact on the people – rural/urban, farming/non-farm – in short, it is relentless and all-encompassing in its destructive sweep which is why people here are resisting these projects," Patel said.

Saying that both the Centre and Gujarat government are implementing the projects at the cost of livelihood, civil rights and human rights of people, Patel added "The state does its best to suppress our democratic rights; we are not allowed to take out protest marches, organize demonstrations or allowed to submit our memoranda to the authorities".

Earlier also, people have been put under ‘preventive custody’ whenever foreign dignitaries visit the state. Government is simply trying to put the people who are expressing the dissent behind the bars.

Simultaneously, in Maharashtra, tribals demonstrated at Dahanu, Palghar and Talasari tehsils against DMIC, bullet train and the expressway.

Maharashtra’s Adivasi Ekta Parishad activist Vinod Dumada has mentioned the results of such projects. “The local tribal population will lose their land, livelihood to roads and industries. This area might progress with big buildings, malls and factories, but the original resident tribals will be driven out," he pointed out.

Earlier, farmers and tribals affiliated to 24 organisations in Maharashtra and Gujarat submitted a joint memorandum to the prime minister’s office. Explaining how the violations of Panchayats Extension to Scheduled Areas (PESA) have taken place, the memorandum read “the consultative provisions of the PESA Act have been reduced to a farce. Survey work, which is part of the project, is being undertaken clandestinely without even informing the gram sabhas.”

“While all these projects are being proposed, the cumulative effect of multiple projects in close proximity to one another will result in the physical, social and cultural upheaval of communities that live in relative symbiosis with nature. To understand the extent of destruction and upheaval it is necessary to view the multiple proposed projects not as individual separate projects, but as a composite whole,” further read the memorandum.