Ekta Parishad is a non-violent Gandhi-inspired social movement in India working on land and forest rights at a national level. It has been built up over the last twenty years growing from the local, to the state, to the national and increasingly, to the international level. The purpose of mobilizing an increasingly growing, very large group of poor people into a loosely structured, major grassroots movement, has been to put pressure directly on central and state government bodies in order to press for legal reforms and structural change.

The structural change that Ekta Parishad is calling for is a profound land reform to enable the marginalized and poorest segments of society to get out of poverty. Land reform – giving the poor access to land is a ‘game changer’ that could bring 40% of the populace out of absolute poverty and substantially reduce the violence that is increasingly threatening Indian society. Violence, that is fueled by naxalite, marxist groups who draw on the misery of people to exert control and to use aggressive means in confronting government, leading to police repression and a climate of fear and violence. Please visit www.ektaparishad.com for further information.

If you want to receive the monthly newsletter of Ekta Parishad, please contact info@ektaparishad.com

If you want to know more about Ekta Parishad, have a look at the following written and multimedia documents:

- Watch an interview of P.V. Rajagopal, in english, giving his views on the situation of land rights and poverty in India and speaking about the results of the Jan Satyagraha March : click here

- Download the collection of stories fropm the ground gathered during the Jan Samwad Yatra in preparation to Jan Satyagraha, March for Justice 2012 : SOIL.STRUGGLE.pdf