Grim Agrarian Scenario Affects Agricultural Workers

 Hannan Mollah

THE policy of central government has brought about serious miseries in the life of agricultural workers. The NDA government has refused to enact a comprehensive central legislation for agricultural workers. The government has reduced the budget for agrarian development by five thousand crores of rupees. This will affect the rural employment seriously. Agricultural workers are not getting even 35 days work in a year in many states. The NDA government’s conspiracy to destroy the public distribution system by increasing the prices of rice, wheat, kerosene etc to the level of market prices will also lead the poor people to starvation.

In Bihar, agricultural workers are also facing unprecedented joblessness, lack of proper wages and severe atrocities. The government has failed to provide relief to the thousands of drought and flood affected people. There has been no food for work programme for them. The government has failed to provide land to the landless and even denied pattas to the poor who occupied lands in 1992. The government backed criminals are now attacking the poor agricultural workers, a majority of whom belong to schedule castes and tribes. Even the criminals who killed the leaders of All India Agricultural Workers Union (AIAWU) are still at large.  

Protesting against the government attacks on their lives, agricultural workers all over the country organised rasta roko and rail roko actions in a big way on May 21. Their demands included enactment of a central legislation for agricultural workers, more jobs and proper wages, land for house-sites, proper public distribution system and a stop to atrocities. The AIAWU had given a call to the agricultural workers of the country to mobilise in a massive resistance struggle against the NDA government’s anti-poor agrarian policy and make the all-India struggle and strike a grand success.

The AIAWU has also made an appeal to the agricultural workers of Bihar to fight the anti-poor policies of the Rabri Devi government in Bihar. All the units of the union worked hard to mobilise thousands of agricultural workers for the “March to Bihar Vidhan Sabha” on May 29 to force the government to change its policy and arrange necessary relief to the lakhs of drought and flood affected agricultural workers, for immediate start of food for work programmes,  to ensure land to the landless from the waste lands in different parts of the state, and to stop atrocities on Dalits and bring the criminals to book for killing union leaders like Ramnath, Siyaram Thakur and others.