People's Democracy

ON August 7, Haryana state unit of the All India Agricultural Workers Union (AIAWU) conducted a convention of agricultural labourers in the state. The purpose was to discuss the crisis in agriculture, how it affected agricultural labourers and the immediate steps to deal with the distress these agricultural labourers and their families are likely to face with the onslaught of unprecedented drought conditions now facing the state.

Presiding over the convention, state AIAWU president Ram Kumar Bahbalpuria pointed out how the deep distress facing agricultural labour and their families was something that had developed as a result of the policies the central and state governments are pursuing. Behind these policies stand the agro-multinationals that are working through the WTO to destroy agricultural labourers and independent small-scale producers.

For agricultural labour, this means less work as mechanisation of most of the agricultural activities as well as of road-repair has reduced the days of work available to them from 122 days per year earlier to about 58 days. At the same time, the massive hike in administrated prices has taken food beyond the poorest sections while the TPDS lists were inadequate and TDPS shops are not functioning. So the convention was called to chalk out a plan of action to ensure that the drought does not become a man-made famine on account of rigorous implementation of the foreign multinationals’ dictates by the NDA regime that is bending over backwards to please these new gods.

Inaugurating the convention, AIAWU’s all-India joint secretary Suneet Chopra pointed out that the organised intervention and resistance of peasants and agricultural labourers was necessary to ensure that a government dependent on foreign debt for its running costs dare not ignore the people and provides them timely and sufficient help. Eager to please its foreign creditors, the government may treat the democratic institutions and organisations as obstacles and try to suppress them. At the same time, anti-democratic, feudal forces have begun to act as "public opinion." They are encouraged by the central government and its allies --- the VHP and Bajrang Dal in Gujarat, the village elders in Madhya Pradesh who drove a woman separated from her husband to sati, or self-styled "Khap Panchayats" of Haryana who have made it a profession to murder young people who marry out of caste. These so-called courts are illegal but, committed to destroying the country’s secular, democratic fabric, the governments are winking at these crimes. Their concern is to seek social support to suppress the democratic resistance that is bound to come up as they sell the country to multinationals and Indian corporates. Chopra asked the Haryana AIAWU to take up these issues and ensure that such criminals are duly punished.

This requires that the present attempts to implement land reforms (successful only in Left-led states like West Bengal, Kerala and Tripura) are to be carried forward as the governments committed to the WTO are bent on reversing the land reforms to the detriment of the vast mass of rural poor. The task of building worker-peasant unity to push forward the agenda of an agrarian revolution is necessary. In order to ensure this, agricultural labour, as the rural proletariat, must be organised and brought to the forefront of this struggle as the organic link between the workers and peasants. He urged them to strengthen the organisation and steel it in sharp struggles so as to save the rural poor from starvation and farmers from ruin in coming days.

State AIAWU secretary Dharamvir Singh Chiri then placed before the delegates the demands charter. He highlighted the urgency of bringing relief to the drought-hit agricultural workers of the state who are without work and on the verge of starvation. He placed the following demands for action:

(1) The government must arrange to provide work all the year round. (2) A fresh survey of those below the poverty line and reissue of TPDS cards accordingly. The PDS must provide all necessaries of life in adequate quantities. (3) The food-for-work programme must be labour-based, provide 8 hours of work per day, and two-thirds wage must be paid in grain and a third in cash. (4) A comprehensive legislation for agricultural labour in Haryana, on the Kerala and Tripura pattern. (5) Provision of houses as well as house-sites for the poor under Indira Awas Yojana, and of public lavatories for women. Provision of drinking water and health facilities in these colonies. (6) Immediate end to social and gender oppression. (7) Cancellation of all debts owed by agricultural labour and poor peasants. (8) Supply of cattle feed to the rural poor at subsidised rates. (9) Immediate implementation of land reforms and grant of pattas to the rural poor for the land they are in possession of or are entitled to. (10) Stop to the conspiracies of divisive, communal and casteist forces in the state.

The discussion was taken up by Jita Singh (Fatehabad), Master Jage Ram (Rohtak), Karambir Singh (Panipat), Shish Pal (Karnal) and Kapur Singh (Jind). Their valuable suggestions were incorporated in the demands charter.

Of a number of resolutions passed, one condemned the Haryana government for not taking up the issue of the SYL Canal’s completion when a fellow NDA man (Prakash Singh Badal) was ruling Punjab. The convention asked to take up struggle for extension of irrigation so as to control the flood and drought conditions seriously affecting the country today.

Another resolution condemned the emergence of a "parallel government" of landlords, criminals and casteist forces that sentence couples who marry out of their caste to death, encourage sati and oppressed Dalits and women by meting them arbitrary punishments. The union vowed to take up movements on social issues, overthrow these parallel governments and get these culprits punished.

A third resolution demanded land for a burial ground for the agricultural labour of Pathargarh, as the Yamuna river has swept their earlier graveyard.

A fourth resolution was on the need to enlist and educate members, organise units as well as tehsil and district level conferences, and move forward to action on these demands.

Militant actions are to take place on the following dates: Panipat: August 19, Rohtak: 26, Karnal: 27, Jind: 28, Kaithal: 29 and Fatehabad: September 3.

It is notable that the whole state committee of All India Kisan Sabha (AIKS) also attended the convention, which endorsed the call for a joint struggle of agricultural labourers and kisans from August 17 to September 1. Greeting the conference, state AIKS secretary Krishan Swaroop stressed the need to unite agricultural labour and the peasantry to save agriculture. He warned of the difficulties ahead but stressed how struggles, properly organised and led, would triumph if we have confidence in ourselves and confront the problems facing us immediately and with spirit.