Interview with Dalit leader and Gujarat MLA Jignesh Mevani.
THIS INTERVIEW WITH JIGNESH MEVANI, the Dalit leader and newly elected Member of the Legislative Assembly from Vadgam, Gujarat, evolved over a number of short interactions spread over a couple of days during his visit toNewDelhi in early January for the Yuva Hunkar Rally, and was completed after a long telephone conversation while he was travelling out of the capital city by road. In spite of the unstructured nature of the interactions, the articulation here is in keeping with his cogent and lucid communication track record. During the interactions, Mevani outlined the responses that his recent initiatives had evoked and delineated how he proposed to advance his politics in the days to come. Excerpts:
Right through the Gujarat Assembly election (December 2017) campaign, you maintained that once electioneering was over you would immediately get back to your core mass mobilisation issues and programmes: the campaign against the atrocities and discrimination faced by the Dalit communities across the country, the indifference of the Narendra Modi-led Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government at the Centre in fulfilling its promise of rolling out two crore jobs for the unemployed youth, and the active pursuit of land distribution demands. In the first and second weeks of January you seem to have picked up and highlighted the Dalit discrimination and employment issues. How do you think this campaign will pan out in the days to come?
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