Sudha Bharadwaj fights for labour rights and is against land acquisition
When Sudha Bharadwaj travels in Chhattisgarh, almost everyone recognizes her. She is what the locals would call a “woman of the people”. Bharadwaj, 54, is tall, with an unassuming demeanour. She has been living in the state for 29 years now, working as a trade unionist, a civil rights activist against land acquisition, and, more recently, as a lawyer.
“If she visits a village once, almost every villager remembers her forever. And when she visits again, 200-300 people always gather to meet her. She might not be fighting all our cases, but she has been here to give us the support we need,” says Rajesh Tripathi, a tribal rights activist based in Chhattisgarh’s Raigarh district.
Draped in a simple cotton sari, sporting a maroon bindi, Bharadwaj speaks fluent English but prefers to talk in Hindi. She says that if you belong to the middle class and want to work with workers, “you actually need to subordinate yourself to the workers’ union leadership…you need to integrate yourself with the community and live the life the working class lives”.
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