Touted as India’s first AI-powered city, the Bidadi Township – which the Karnataka government intended to build as a second business district to decongest the southern state’s capital, Bangalore – has been stalled by farmers resisting land acquisition.
On August 25, the 532nd day of their protest against the government’s notification to acquire 9,600 acres of fertile, multicropped land in 26 villages of Bengaluru South district, Chief Minister D.K. Shivakumar conceded to farmers, assuring them their land would not be forcibly acquired.
Earlier that noon, hundreds of farmers from the notified gram panchayats (village councils) of Byramangala and Kanchugaranahalli, about 40 km southwest of Bangalore, travelled to the city in ten buses carrying placards.
They gathered at Freedom Park. The former Central Jail, where the British colonial administration held freedom fighters and Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s government held political prisoners during the 1975 emergency, was opened to the public and dedicated in 2009 as a space for holding protests.
Farmers began their demonstration here by standing upright and spinning their green scarves overhead to Kannada-language songs of peasant resistance, performed by a small band called Beru Bevaru (Sweat and Roots).
