Woman of Steel

On 26.11.2008 Dayamani Barla was awarded Chingari Award for Women Against Corporate Crime 2008. This award iitself is instituted by two women who took on UC after Bhopal Tragedy. They, Rasheeda Bee and Champa Devi Shukla, won Goldman Environmental Prize in 2004.They put the prize money into a trust which would choose every year a woman working for the same cause.

Dayamani Barla is 44 years old tribal dalit woman, born to an extremely poor landless laborer and wen on to become journalist and activist. She is leading the fight against the giant steel plant coming up in Jharkhand, because she belives that the prices tribals will have to pay when they are displaced from their land can not be compensated by a few jobs or money.

Through her writting, Dayamani has set a standard for the kind of relevant journalism that is rare at a time when celebrity and sensation dominates media.

In Jharkhand, as in other tribal dominated states, local people are organising resistance gaisnt giant industrial and minning projects. The outcomes of these struggles may well shape the economics and politics of our country. These battles actually represent opportunities to devise developement that is inclusive, participative, sustainable, respects limited availability of natural resources.

It is with help of women and men like Dayamni Barla that governments and administrations are being forced to consider alternatives to their immediate limited perspective and vestsed interests. Only in the availability of such space for view and counterview, to offer and accept that democracy can survive, let alone flourish.

My salute to all these crusaders because of whom we can express whatever we wish to.