People's Democracy

Launch Militant Struggle For Concessions

Suneet Chopra

TRAVELLING through North India today one sees barely half the area covered in green. The rest is dry ploughed land. A severe drought grips the country. Among the hardest hit are the states that are the granary of India. Haryana has received 69 per cent less rain this year and Punjab has had 49 per cent less. Rajasthan is worse off with 67 per cent less while Uttar Pradesh is no better with 59 per cent less. The condition of large tracts of Madhya Pradesh is no better, while Bihar has suffered from both flood and drought. The South is also hard hit by drought with Karnataka receiving 40 per cent less rain, while Andhra is a close second with 39 per cent less. In the country, 321 of the 593 districts are drought hit. An official report speaks of a 10 million tonne drop in output this year (which is two-thirds of the Kharif crop). 150 million agricultural labourers face starvation, as they have no work to do.

But famine can, and ought to be, avoided. Leading economists of different persuasions, including Amartya Sen, have pointed out that in the world we live in, famines are not caused by brute scarcity but by the lack of purchasing power with large sections of the population to buy food at inflated prices. And the government of India can avoid occurrence of famines if it has the will to do it. On January 26, the Prime Minister of India boasted of an over six crore tonne stock of grain (which a parliamentary committee had earlier recommended be thrown into the sea!). Moreover, the government has a Calamity Relief Fund of Rs.2196 crores and over Rs.11000 crore in the National Calamity Contingency Fund.

UNEVEN

DISTRIBUTION

Both the grain stock that is already creating a serious storage problem and these funds could be used to fuel effective food for work programmes that would not only give the rural landless money to buy grain with but will also strengthen the rural infrastructure by building roads, cleaning up and digging more canals, and constructing schools and hospitals among other things. And even if there is a fear of depleting stocks the government could buy stocks from the Kharif harvest to supplement them. Also, it has an option to import food worth $60 billion, so there is nothing to stop it from coming forward boldly and averting a famine and the anarchy that accompanies such calamities.

Then what prevents it from acting? So far, the NDA government has a dismal record with regard to rural development schemes. For two years of the rural roads scheme Rs.6,891 crores was budgeted, but only Rs.1644.22 crores was spent. As for the drinking water scheme, even though a miserable Rs.572 crores was granted for it, only Rs.118 crores was spent. True, one could put the blame on state governments for this also; but the record of uneven distribution of funds and blatant partisan behaviour of the NDA government’s chief component, the BJP, as is evident from the petrol pump scandal and the Andhra Pradesh grain scandal involving no less than Rs.3500 crores, points the finger squarely at the central government for this dereliction. In fact, if we compare the 1226 million man days and 1232 million man days work provided under rural employment schemes during 1994-95 and 1995-96 respectively, with only 486 million man days in 2000-2001(which is 61 million man days less than 1999-2000), we clearly see who is responsible for this mess. So, obviously factors other than the lack of resources are behind these derelictions.

Chief among these factors are the WTO and IMF restrictions being mercilessly imposed on the Indian people by a government implementing the blatantly anti-people policies of the WTO even beyond the prescriptions of that organisation. For example, our agrarian market was to have opened up to foreign trade in 2004; but under pressure from the USA, the process was begun bilaterally in 1999 –2000 and finished a couple of years afterwards. This should warn us that the NDA government is more concerned about its foreign mentors than the lives and property of Indian citizens. This was shamefully evident from the prime minister’s statement that the massacre of Indian citizens in a state governed by the BJP with an RSS Pracharak as chief minister pained him only because he could not show his face to his foreign mentors who had rightly criticised the Sangh Parivar’s blood-bath.

What can we do in the face of all this? The government lacks the will to avoid a famine. Recourse to the law gives only moral support and the BJP and its allies have no respect for legality as is evident from the way in which the BSP- led government of UP has failed to correct the technical flaw in the Babri Masjid case, thus bailing out the leaders of the Sangh Parivar including the deputy prime minister. The case of Modi’s persistent survival in the face of every sort of criticism of the Gujarat pogrom is another case in point.

DIRECT

ACTION

If legal measures are brushed aside with contempt, the people have only the path of direct action left. And they have been moving forward persistently along that path. Since July, agricultural labourers have begun to come out in struggles demanding that certain districts be declared drought hit and food for work programmes be started. Farmers have been agitating for electricity and water. And they have met with some success in areas of UP like Chandauli and Varanasi, which successfully held a complete bandh on July 9. Widespread agitations are reported from Bihar to MP, Haryana and Punjab, on these and related issues. On September 25, in Ganganagar (Rajasthan) I had occasion to see how desperate people are for food and jobs. For ten days there was a massive gherao led by AIAWU and AIDWA of over 15000 people daily, by the farm labourers living near the Pakistan border, to be compensated for work lost in the areas the army had taken over, among other things. The agitation started on September 15 and from September 22 they had surrounded the collector and his staff. The collector fled, leaving the staff behind. Finally the chief minister met a delegation consisting of AIAWU, AIKS, CITU and CPI(M) leaders on September 25 and conceded their major demands. This was a signal victory. (See report elsewhere in this issue)

Now Punjab is up in arms and even its chief minister courted arrested in New Delhi on September 25. On September 27, the AIKS, AIAWU, DYFI and other mass organisations joined the Kisan Sabha call to block rail tracks in many parts of the state, demanding increased procurement prices. Otherwise farmers hard hit by the drought will not be able to pay for the costs of the winter harvest and provide the employment that they normally do. In Punjab too, the AIAWU had already begun its agitation for compensation to agricultural labourers who are desperately facing starvation conditions as a result of the drought and for implementing food for work and other rural employment programmes after its twenty third state conference in Banga on August 31 and September 1. A mass movement is likely to emerge all over Northern India with the central government’s complete lack of concern over reports of starvation deaths, suicides and misery of drought- hit people. Its demands will vary from drought compensation to the call for the BJP government at the centre to go. But that should not surprise us. The miseries of the drought hit have been compounded by the pro-US slant of the NDA government’s policies. What is important is that this struggle concerns the lives and livelihood of millions of people and so it cannot be undertaken only formally. The fight to ensure that the moral victories that may be won by forcing the governments to concede the correctness of the demand- like the one for compensation to drought hit agricultural labour- must be followed up by victories in implementing these demands.

We have seen already that contractors are using a good deal of machinery even in implementing food for work programmes in UP, so a demand can be made for the exclusive use of manual labour recruited through panchayats for drought relief work. The payment of minimum wages, the proper functioning of the below poverty line Public Distribution System, issues like pensions and even food kitchens may be necessary to fight for bitterly before they are implemented. So a period of long, well-organised struggles lies ahead of us which will doubtless broaden out into a political struggle to throw the BJP-led government at the centre out of power. It is an excellent occasion to work for a decisive shift in political alignments. It should not be squandered away.