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Showing posts with the label B R Ambedkar

Land to the Tiller (Social Change)

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The architect of the Indian Constitution, Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar, while addressing a group of Dalits in a speech, exhorted them to understand that though education is the future, land is our present and our future. The Dalit activist and Tamil writer Palanimuthu Sivakami explains B R Ambedkar’s ideas about land and its vital presence in India. The former IAS officer has made it her mission in life to alleviate the deplorable condition of low caste individuals in our country. The land issues in Goa have not escaped her attention and in her estimation the lecture, Ambedkar and the Land Question, at the Goa Arts and Literary Festival 2015, was one most pertinent at this moment in time. It is an undeniable fact that there is a link between the IAS and land. P Sivakami says, ‘Look at my case: if my father hadn’t had any land, I would not have become part of the IAS.’ A survey of IAS officers from Dalit and tribal communities would reveal that 99 percent of these officers have had land to su