Bandu Akhade and his family once owned nearly 2.63 hectares of land on Survey number 135 in Pol village near Lonavala. Today, while the property is owned by the Bachchans, the Akhades are left with four acres, barely enough to support the family. Bandu now sells fruits and Balu, his brother, sells milk in Karjat near Mumbai to make a living. "I know Mr Bachchan lives in his bungalow in Mumbai, I have never seen him here," says Bandu who now lives in a shack off the Mumbai-Pune Expressway near Khandala.
The government had acquired their land for the Pavana dam in 1968. After the unused land was released in ’95, Mumbai’s elite including Bachchan took possession. Now the district collector is inquiring into how agricultural land was transferred to Bachchan and others. For, sale to non-agriculturalists is illegal.
The Akhades should consider themselves lucky they got four acres as compensation. Barku Margare didn’t even get that. For over 30 years, he has lived the life of the displaced at the foothills of the historic Lohagad fort. He too once owned a piece of land, now in the possession of Bachchan and his son Abhishek. "What can we do? We don’t have any voice and for the sarkar we don’t exist. I doubt if Mr Bachchan or the government will bother themselves over this," says Margare. He and Akhade are now part of the ever-growing statistic of the landless in Maharashtra. The future, indeed, looks bleak.
