Hyderabad: Expressing her displeasure over Telangana police preventing social activist Medha Patkar from visiting a basti from where the people were evicted to facilitate the Musi rejuvenation efforts, AICC in-charge of Telangana Meenakshi Natarajan said that it was wrong on the part of the police to stop her. She opined that a progressive political party would not ask citizens like Medha Patkar to take permission before visiting an area, as it is her right to meet the people.
Addressing the concluding day’s ceremony of the four-day national conclave of the National Alliance of People’s Movements (NAPM) held at the Exhibition Grounds on Tuesday, March 4, she said she attended as a ‘Sarvodaya Karyakarta’ and grew up inspired by Medha Patkar and others fighting for people’s rights.
“Today, workers of political parties think that power is given to them by the leaders at the top. They have forgotten that they draw real power from the people, and from the people’s movements. Hence, a constant dialogue between party workers and people’s movements is essential,” she noted.
“Real politics is about working for socio-economic change. It is the people’s movements which do that work, and political party workers need to learn from people’s movements and start doing the real people’s politics again. In that sense, we need to re-politicize political parties,” she observed.
She has assured that she will have a regular dialogue with the people’s organizations, to understand the issues and to see what the government could do.
It is pertinent to mention that on Monday, March 3, Medha Patkar had gone to the Musi river bed at Chaderghat, where she visited bastis that were evicted last year as part of the rehabilitation and rejuvenation efforts by the state government.
The police prevented her from entering the basti and asked her to leave. When she visited NAPM volunteer Syed Bilal at his residence in the basti, the police followed and asked her to leave, citing a lack of permission for her visit.
Several national political leaders spoke at the concluding day’s debates on the topic “Role of political parties and people’s movements in defending the constitution and democracy.”
The Hyderabad Declaration
The Hyderabad Declaration was passed by NAPM, pledging to resist corporate plunder of land, water, forests, labour, and commons; fascist rewriting of history, laws, and citizenship; commodification of education, healthcare, and housing; erosion of workers’ rights, caste discrimination, Adivasi autonomy, and gender justice; suppression of civil liberties, democratic governance, and freedom for jailed prisoners; disinformation and weaponization of social media; and global capital flows that undermine sovereignty while deepening inequality and exploitation.
The convention pledged to reconstruct a people’s economy based on communities, cooperatives, and ecological balance; a politics where gram sabhas and jan sansads hold power, not billionaires and politicians; a system where Dalits, Adivasis, women, workers, and minorities do not just survive but thrive with dignity in an equitable society; an education system that nurtures critical minds, not obedient machines; a country where no human is illegal, no faith is above another, and no love is criminalised; and a world where climate action is driven by justice, not profiteering, and where the Earth is protected not as an asset, but as a shared home for all beings, present and future.
“We do not wait for saviours. We do not place faith only in elections that are manipulated with votes – machines and mechanisms – bought and sold. We are the people’s movement, and we struggle to bring in change. Let the rulers and political elite tremble, when they hear our slogans and our marching footsteps. Let us rise together, speak together, struggle together. Let us carry forward our collective
vision, our dreams, our hopes. Let us build India and humanity of our dreams,” the declaration appealed.
Eminent leaders who spoke at the event included TJS convener Professor Kodandaram, Samajwadi Party MP Javed Ali Khan, Communist Party of India (CPI) Kerala leader Annie Raja, Communist Party of India-Marxist CPI(M) polit-bureau member Dr Ashok Dhawale, Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) liberation leader Clifton D’Rozario among others.
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