KHEDUT MAZDOR CHETNA SANGHAT ALIRAJPUR, JHABUA, M.P.
I live in Jhabua district, in Kelandi falia. My name is Undali. We have been fighting for our rights because our condition is very bad. We cannot cook food for our children, cannot feed cattle. They bring mazdoors and dig up our hills. We cannot live like this. One way of solving these problems is by organising, getting together, making a sangathan. That is why we left our villages, left our laaj-sharam (inhibitions) and talked to women. That is how we are here today… so far-away-from our homes. We will come when you are in trouble and you will come when we have problems… Together we will solve each other’s problems…We left our villages to work in Navsari. We are called ‘mama log’. We are treated like dirty people. We are adivasis, we are not dirty. But yes, we do everything on our own from childhood onwards. We work in the fields, grow our crops… For our stomachs, we work on mud, with mud. In the monsoons our clothes get dirty, our bodies get muddy…. Because we sow seeds and work on the farm. We will be dirty… You, who call us dirty, what about you? You go to school, get good food, sleep. As children we are made do with bhaji, sometimes we don’t get roti. We go without vegetables at times. How many people will half a kilo feed? We get together and grow things. This is how we work, that is how we earn. We do not own anything. Dalals loot us, sarkar people come to steal the wood we bring from the forests… How can we possibly have any possessions at all…