Landless agricultural workers march to Delhi for land - see video

By Dilip -
Tens of thousands of landless peasant farmers gather in Gwalior in north India to march to the capital, New Delhi, to demand their right to land. Around 40% of India's rural population is landless and most live in extreme poverty. The 190-mile journey is expected to last another three weeks. 
Link to video below: 

 http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/video/2012/oct/09/india-landless-march-delhi-video

Rural India marches on Delhi over landless poor
So far the marchers, 50,000-strong according to the organisers, have covered around 80 kilometres, not even a quarter of the distance they hope to travel. Their march will take another three weeks. They have come from Kerala in the south-west to Bengal in the north-east, all drawn from the poorest of the Indian poor. They had gathered at the northern town of Gwalior, and then set off last Wednesday, the anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi's birth, inspired by the independence leader's own tactics.
PV Rajagopal, the veteran activist who organised the yatra (pilgrimage), told the Guardian that the participants' aim was not just to win a "right to land" but to fundamentally alter the direction of India's development. "There is conflict at every level with the model we have now. Gandhi's vision in this country is being rejected every day. Now we have a capitalist, consumerist model. If India does not change this, the writing is on the wall," he said, explaining that a similar, smaller march in 2007 had had an insufficient impact.
There are many who argue that such views are naive and that India's development – and thus the eradication of poverty – depends on urbanisation, massive investment in infrastructure and the development of a manufacturing base capable of providing employment for huge numbers of people, especially the young. Then there are those who argue that the sanctification of rural life inspired by Gandhi has contributed to the tenacity of poverty in India. Rajagopal, who made his name negotiating the surrender of bandits in the rough countryside around Gwalior in the early 1970s, disagrees. "Nearly 100,000 villages have been destroyed since India gained its independence. I cannot accept industrialisation at this cost," he said...

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