This web page chronicles the struggle of a tribal community in northern India to obtain and sow land that the government has for decades left idle, and is now seeking to return to the local elite. Across India, laws originally intended to benefit the landless poor are being perverted by the government in favor of corrupt landlords and businessmen. Vast amounts of land under government title are lying fallow while people starve.

These laws were intended to reduce inequities in land ownership, but they have never been properly implemented.

In Maharashtra, a 1961 act placed a 'ceiling' on how much land any one person could possess and manage. Lands in excess of the ceiling fell under state government control. However, the government has since done nothing with fast acreages. Additionally, it is now being re-engineering the law to return the land to the rich.

For years, tribal people in Maharashtra, adivasis, have occupied small areas of this land. Being among the most marginalized peoples in India, the majority of adivasis live as semi-bonded labourers. In the 1980s and 1990s, lawyers and rights groups began representing individual adivasi land claims in the courts, but as the piles of petitions grew they became bogged down, and the petitioners subject to police intimidation.

In 1995, an adivasi community at Puntamba, Ahmednagar District, set up Bhumi Hakka Andolan (Land Rights Movement), and began a campaign for their rights in the Bombay High Court, as well as organizing mass occupation of ceiling lands. Despite constant violence and threats by police, government officials and the hired thugs of local landlords, the campaign has continued to this day.