NBA to launch national movement, oppose UPA's policies on rehab

New Delhi, Jan 3 (UNI) Narmada Bachao Andolan along with various groups will launch a National Peoples' Movement 2007 in March to challenge ''faulty and biased'' policies of the UPA Government on development and rehabilitation.

Announcing this here today, NBA leader Medha Patkar said the activists representing various alliances working with farmers, farm workers, unorganised workers, trade unions, tribals, urban displaced and the common man will together fight the ''anti-poor'' system.

Representatives of all the groups will chalk out the future course of the movement in February, said Ms Patkar who is on a sit-in at Jantar Mantar for the past two days over the Narmada issue.

''We don't have a National Rehabilitation policy and poor people across the country are agitating at their own level.... We all will come together and take up issues like Narmada, Singur, Dadri, Paradweep in Orissa and displacement in Delhi from one forum,'' she said.

''We want to build public opinion against vote bank politics of the Government which is leading to the anti-poor policies. We will ensure that the Government is compelled to change such policies and if its does not we will fight it,'' she added.

Coming down heavily on the government, veteran journalist Kuldip Nayar said the government had betrayed the people of the country as it had failed to fulfilled its promises.

''The Government is violating the human rights of the displaced.

In the absence of the rehabilitation policy only a few handful of people are benefiting from the development process,'' he claimed.

Ms Patkar alleged that the peoples' struggle against displacement, privatisation and monopolisation of resources have been sought to be crushed by a nexus of Government, bureaucracy and corporates.

''The issues of survival, security and sovereignty are at the core of varied action by citizens....The onslaught on the poor is perpetrated in multiple locations and dimensions like land accquired for SEZ or destruction of slums,'' she added.

The movement will focus on securing livelihood, right over resources for agriculture, fisher people and tribals, a demand for changes in the democratic process and structure of policy, social justice and due rights for Dalits, minorities and women and India retaining its sovereignty without submission to global capitalist powers.

The organistions which will join the movement include National Campaign for Unorganised Workers, NAPM and Delhi Shramik Sangathan.

UNI