People's Democracy
(Weekly Organ of the Communist Party of India (Marxist)
No. 39
September 30, 2012
|
Vol. XXXVI
No. 39 September 30, 2012 |
AIKS
Organises
State Workshop & First Kisan
Gujar THE The highlight
of this workshop was the First Krishna Khopkar Memorial
Lecture that was
delivered in the evening
of September 15
by Dr V K Ramachandran, Professor of Economics at the
Indian Statistical
Institute, Kolkata. September 15 was the second death
anniversary of Comrade
Krishna Khopkar, who was one of the leading
figures in the Left
peasant movement of INAUGURAL
ADDRESS The
workshop began with
the flag-hoisting by the senior most
AIKS state vice president,
L B Dhangar, who is
still very active at
85 years of age. Kisan Gujar
placed the condolence resolution in which homage
was paid to Captain Laxmi Sehgal,
Dipankar Mukherjee, progressive
actor A K
Hangal, and AIKS
leaders Nathu Ozare,
Savji Dhanare, Mahadu Dumada and martyr Mathi Ozare. WEAKENED Secondly, Dr Ramakumar said
that the economic “reform” process
after 1991 has significantly weakened the institutional
support structures in
agriculture. The protection offered to agriculture from
predatory imports was
removed, resulting in a fall in prices of many
commodities. As part of fiscal
reforms, major input subsidies were brought down. Input
costs have exhibited a
sharp rise after a reduction in subsidies. This rise in
the input cost is
reflected in the rising electricity bills, rising costs of
high yielding seeds,
fertilisers, energy (diesel) and transportation. The
rising input costs are not
matched by crop yields and output prices. The minimum
support price has not
been available to all farmers, particularly the small and
marginal farmers.
Public capital formation in agriculture continued to fall,
and the growth of
public expenditure on research and extension slowed down.
The expansion of
rural credit was halted, reopening the doors for the
informal sector. Farmers
today have zero access to the public extension machinery
that gives sound
information on how to deal with pests and declining
productivity of land. The
farmers are dependent on agents of fertiliser and
pesticide companies for
advice on seeds and crop care. The information base of the
farmers is, thus,
limited to the data provided by the agents of input
companies and their
products. A reversal of neo-liberal policies in
agriculture has become absolutely
essential to revive the livelihood systems of rural
households in In
the second session of the workshop, the burning problems
of the peasantry from
various regions of Maharashtra were placed by some of the
AIKS state
office-bearers, as follows: Marathwada – Arjun Adey,
Vidarbha – Udayan Sharma,
Western Maharashtra – A B Patil, Nashik – Hemant Waghere
and Thane – Ratan
Budhar. AIKS state secretary Kisan Gujar placed the coming organisational
tasks related to AIKS conferences
at all levels and the membership drive. MEMORIAL LECTURE The
same evening was the First Krishna Khopkar Memorial
Lecture delivered by Dr V K
Ramachandran. The event was presided over by J P Gavit,
and Khopkar’s oldest comrade L
B Dhangar paid tribute to his memory.
After paying rich homage to Comrade Krishna
Khopkar, Ramachandran spoke
on "Resolving the Agrarian Question in He
backed his
analysis by placing
extremely illuminating
facts and figures
from the intensive village
surveys
conducted by the AIKS and the Foundation of Agrarian
Studies in several states including ·
to free the countryside of all forms
of landlordism, old and new; ·
to free the working peasantry and
manual workers from their present
fetters of unfreedom and drudgery and to guarantee them
the means of income and
livelihood; ·
to redistribute agricultural land; ·
to provide the rural working people
with house-sites, and basic, clean, sanitary
homes and habitations; ·
to create the conditions for the
liberation of the people of the
scheduled castes and tribes, of women, and other victims
of sectional
deprivation (including in most parts of ·
to ensure universal formal school
education; ·
to achieve the general democratisation
of life and progressive cultural
development in rural FUTURE
PROGRAMME On the
morning of
the second day, delegates
held district-wise
group discussions
where they planned out
their agitational
and organisational
tasks for the coming
six months. On behalf of each district, two
comrades reported what they had planned to the entire
workshop. This session,
in which 34 comrades from 19 districts participated, was a
rich and lively
session. This session was presided over by AIKS state
working president
Rajaram Ozare, MLA. The AIKS
workshop was greeted
by CITU state general
secretary Dr D L Karad, who stressed
the importance of worker-peasant unity. An AIKS
state
council meeting was
held in the afternoon
and it finalised the agitational
and
organisational tasks in the light of the
discussion by the delegates.
These
included a joint state convention of sugarcane peasants,
cane cutters and sugar
factory workers on October 21 at Amabajogai to be organised by
the CITU, AIKS and
AIAWU, and a convention of the cotton peasants organised
by the AIKS at
Amravati on October 31, in both of which, a call for struggle of these sections
will be given;
taking
up issues of drought,
irrigation, power,
food security and other local
issues in each district; launching
another major state-wide struggle for the
stringent
implementation of the Forest Rights Act; beginning an intensive
membership drive from October;
and starting AIKS village
conferences, to
go on to tehsil and
district conferences,
to culminate in the 21st AIKS state conference to be held
at Amravati in the
Vidarbha region in
March 2013. These
tasks were
placed in their concluding speeches in the last session of
the state workshop
by Dr Ashok Dhawale and J P Gavit,
who also spoke of the political challenges
before the country and the state. They castigated
the recent anti-people policies of the UPA-2 regime,
like the diesel price hike, the limit placed on subsidised
cooking gas
cylinders, the green signal
given to FDI in
retail, and also the
anti-peasant agrarian policies that had led to peasant
suicides on an
unprecedented scale. They attacked the massive corruption
scandals of the UPA
regime, as
manifested most recently in
the Coalgate scam in
which the prime
minister himself was involved. They also came down heavily
on the agrarian
policies of the Congress-NCP
regime
in Maharashtra, which had not only proved its bankruptcy
in dealing with the
severe drought situation in the state, but was also
responsible for large-scale
irrigation
scams to the tune of thousands of crores of rupees. This
scam has just led to
the resignation of
the NCP’s deputy chief
minister and former irrigation
minister. Finally,
both of them called
for a massive strengthening of the AIKS and the
Left movement in
In his inaugural address,
Dr R Ramakumar said
that
The inaugural address was
divided into two
sections. The first section concerned itself with
historical problems of
agrarian transformation in
First, the overall record of
implementation of land reforms
in the state of
If tenancy reforms had only
limited success, the
record of distributing ceiling surplus land has been a
total sham. As on
September 2006, only 1.7 per cent of the net sown area
in the state has been
declared surplus. It has to be one important task of the
AIKS to identify these
lands and bring them to the notice of the government.
Further, of all the land
declared surplus, 76,914 acres is yet to be taken over.
The AIKS has to demand
for a complete takeover of surplus land as soon as
possible.
In sum, said Dr Ramakumar,
tenancy reforms and
redistribution of surplus land have not benefited
landless sections in any
significant way. Latest data, for 2003, from the NSSO
show that 38.3 per cent
of rural households are landless. On the other hand,
just 9 per cent of the
households own 51 per cent of all land. It is thus clear
that land reforms have
been a major failure in the state in reducing
concentration of land ownership.
The tasks on the land front
in
INSTITUTIONAL
SUPPORT
When India gained
independence 62 years ago, the
major economic problems of the newly independent nation
could be characterised
thus: hundreds of millions of India’s people lived in
the depths of income
poverty, in conditions of hunger, illiteracy, lack of
schooling, avoidable
disease, and subject to what were among the worst forms
of class, caste, and
gender oppression in the world. The truly appalling
feature of more than six
decades of independent development is that, that
characterisation of
Dr Ramachandran explained
that to solve the
agrarian question today is to address seven major
issues:
