A housewife’s crusade
K.P.M. Basheer
PARTY: Independent
CONSTITUENCY: Ernakulam
STATE: Kerala
MISSION STATEMENT: I want this antiquated, inhuman law [Land Acquisition Act of 1894] overhauled. I don’t want anyone else to suffer the way I have.
Mary Francis knows pretty well that hers is a losing battle. But the 60-year-old housewife is standing to draw attention to what she sees as a life-and-death issue for thousands of people from Nandigram to the Narmada Valley — displacement in the name of development. Ms. Francis understands their pain well.
In February last year, her home and the carpentry workshop run by her husband on a quarter of an acre property on the tiny emerald island of Moolampally in the Kochi backwaters were demolished. The bulldozers, sent out by the Ernakulam district administration, were making way for a road to the Vallarpadam project — a Rs. 3,000-crore international container transhipment terminal of the Cochin Port Trust being constructed by India Gateway Terminals Limited on a build-operate-transfer basis. (ఇంకా…)
