KEY POINTS:
Every day of her life Malti Devi gets up long before dawn to begin the tasks that stretch for endless hours ahead of her.
She cooks for her family, then spends 10 hours labouring in the fields for as little as 20 rupees (67c) before returning for
more domestic chores. She rises at 4am but is often still working at 11pm.
"I will only eat if there is anything left after feeding everyone else," she said, sitting in the red dust of a makeshift encampment in Delhi. "If we had some land of our own, it would be ours. We are working but we get such a small share, I cannot feed my children."
Devi and the thousands of other landless peasants who were sitting alongside her are among the poorest and most powerless members of India's vast population. But their voices are being heard.
In what campaigners say is a crucial breakthrough, the Indian Government has announced it will set up a national authority tasked with overseeing land reform across the country.
That the Government of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was forced to act was the result of about 25,000 people such as Devi, who have arrived exhausted and footsore in the Indian capital after marching for a month.
The marchers, made up of the poor, the landless and the so-called "untouchables" from across India, set off at the beginning of October, walking from the town of Gwalior in Madhya Pradesh.
Seven of them died over the course of the 322 kilometres; three were killed in a traffic accident that injured several others. Many had nothing but the thinnest of sandals to walk in. Some just had their bare feet.
And yet the marchers were determined that nothing should prevent them from taking their message to India's political leaders.
"My God, it's such a strength. I am not alone," said Devi, from the village of Usiri Sikapuri in the dirt-poor state of Bihar, when asked what it felt like to be part of a group that was 25,000 strong.
"I came here for my rights. If my feet get burnt or even if I die then it is worth it. Back home, we can die from hunger, why not die fighting for our rights?"
Although the marchers began walking four weeks ago, it was three years ago that the journey, which brought them to Delhi began and seized headlines normally dominated by stories of India's newly wealthy middle-classes. The idea - called Janadesh 2007, or People's Verdict - came from R.V. Rajgopal, a well-known activist and founder of a social justice movement called Ekta Parishad.
Rajgopal, a veteran Gandhian and supporter of non-violent protest, has worked on land-rights issues for years. In a country where more than 70 per cent of the population was dependent on the land to survive, the fight for its more equitable distribution was crucial, he said. Across India, the evidence of a widespread sense of marginalisation felt by so many people - a feeling that at its most deadly is played out in violent and lethal protests over land being seized for industrial development - is steadily growing. And yet Rajgopal said he found himself confronted by politicians who appeared interested only in promoting industrial development.
"The Government talks only of industrial development and dismisses agriculture. But 73 per cent of India's population depend on agriculture. What are they to do?" he asked. "Development cannot only be for the benefit of the richest people. It must be for all the people, starting with the poorest. First agricultural and land reform. Then the rest."
Rajgopal became convinced that the only way to make the politicians take notice was to bring to Delhi those people who traditionally have the least leverage in the city.
He envisaged an old-fashioned display of people-power aimed at bringing pressure to bear and he set about organising it. In consultation with other grassroots organisations, the organisers focused on three key aims: the establishment of a national commission with the power to direct state governments to carry out land reforms, the setting up of fast-track courts to settle land disputes and the creation of a "single window" system in each rural district to handle all land-reform issues.
"We talk of land but it really means livelihood," said Rajan Khosla, the India officer for Christian Aid..
Khosla said large areas of land owned by the Government were lying fallow and that it was these areas that should be turned over to the landless. He said the organisers of Janadesh had carefully calculated what land was available. They were not asking for something that did not exist.
The marchers who gathered in a fairground in northern Delhi at the end of the march had come from 15 of India's 27 states. Having arrived in the capital the previous evening, the plan had been for the campaigners to march to the grounds of the national parliament building and sit and wait until the Government said it was ready to act.
But police had surrounded the park where the marchers had camped overnight and told them they were not free to move.
Citing crowd control and traffic issues, the Home Ministry let it be known that the marchers would not be allowed to proceed, even though the organisers had filed details of their planned march two years before. The day before, the police had easily managed to handle a half marathon that required large parts of the city to be closed off.
"It is a bad sign that the Government is curtailing these people's freedom of speech," said Jill Carr-Harris, a Canadian who has worked in India with Ekta Parishad for the past 20 years and who also completed the march. "We have been telling them about this march for two years. The last six months in particular we have been reminding them."
But with nowhere to go, the landless from across the breadth and length of India sat down with their tattered bags and blistered feet and quietly waited.
Onkar Pandey was typical of those who had marched to Delhi and was patiently waiting to hear what the Government was going to do. "Most of the people in my village are landless," said Pandey, from a village in Madhya Pradesh. "There is day work and bonded labour. People forage in the forests. I get up at around 4am. By seven or eight, I am in the fields and work until six."
Pandey said he had four children. The most he would earn for a day's labour was 50 rupees. Women earned considerably less. Not surprisingly, he said it was hard to feed his family.
"If I go back to my village with no agreement from the government people, they will be depressed," he said.
"But if the Government does not act, then we will make sure they will not stay in power."
But in the early afternoon Rajgopal was called to the offices of the Ministry for Rural Development. Activists believed it was a sign the Government was ready to act.
Several hours later, the minister arrived at the fairgrounds to announce that, indeed, the Government was prepared to move on the issue. He said that within a month, the Government would establish a new panel that would create policies, guide states and monitor the progress of land distribution. It would also be empowered to make rapid decisions about compensation disputes.
It was not everything the organisers had wanted but they believe it represented a landmark decision. "This is huge, it really marks a breakthrough," said Rajgopal.
The organisers said they also obtained another agreement from the Government: the authorities will now help organise extra buses and trains to take home the 25,000 people who came to Delhi, fought against seemingly unstoppable forces and won.
This time, they do not have to walk.
