View from the Margins: In the tea gardens of Bengal, neither Ram Mandir nor Kashmir is a poll issue

Voting is often the only chance that many of India's marginalised groups get to express themselves. As national elections approach, Scroll's reporters fanned out across the country to talk to groups with little socio-political power as part of a series called the View from the Margins. The aim: try to understand how the powerless and the voiceless have fared under a decade of the Modi government.

Joy Prafful Lakra was running a fever as we spoke on the phone in mid-March. When I asked if he would like to reschedule the interview, he refused saying he had already delayed my request by a few weeks. By all measures he had been keeping busy.

Earlier in the month, a collective he started had organised a seven-day, 200-kilometre padyatra for Adivasis from the village of Sankosh to Naxalbari in West Bengal. The marchers had four demands in the main. One, increased self-governance for the Adivasi population of the Dooars-Terai region. Second, the recognition of Hindi as a working language in the public sector and for earning a livelihood in the region. Third, the formulation of Adivasi battalions in the police and army. And lastly, teaching students in Adivasi languages such as Kurukh, Mundari, Santali, and Sadri.

Lakra does not see...

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