People's Democracy

AIKS Chalks Out Action Plan

THE Central Kisan Committee (CKC) of the All India Kisan Sabha (AIKS) met in Kolkata on June 9-10. The meeting was presided over by AIKS president S Ramchandran Pillai and was attended by Benoy Konar, K Varadha Rajan, Mahaboob Zahedi, Surya Kanata Mishra, and others.

The CKC discussed the deep agrarian crisis that has resulted from the LPG policies being followed by the BJP-led central government, and decided on some immediate actions against the same.

The CKC congratulated the Left Front of West Bengal for its big victory in the panchayat elections inspite of all odds created by the opportunist alliance of the Trinamul Congress, BJP and the Congress (I), who put up combined opposition in more than half the total seats. West Bengal is the only state in India where regular panchayat elections have taken place for the last 25 years and where the Left Front has won consecutively for the sixth time.

The CKC took an important decision to launch an all-India campaign on the question of food for the millions of people who have severely affected by drought in large parts of the country.

The committee also decided to begin an all-India campaign against the WTO conditionalities. A nationwide campaign will be organised against the imperialist efforts to further tighten WTO conditionalities in the coming meeting at Cancun, Mexico in September 2003. The AIKS has decided to organise massive demonstrations all over the country at the district and mandal levels on the first day of the WTO meet.

The meeting adopted resolutions on drought, on the deaths due to heat wave and on the Cargil company’s fraud on the peasantry, where tens of thousands of peasants were affected due to sub-standard maize seeds supplied by the company.

The committee received the membership of the AIKS, which now exceeds one crore 68 lakh. This year’s membership will be finalised on July 1, when it is expected to cross 1 crore 70 lakh.

The CKC also decided to organise all-India seminars on the LPG policies and their effects on agriculture and irrigation, on atrocities on scheduled castes and scheduled tribes, credit problems, etc, in various state capitals in the coming months.

To strengthen the organisation, the committee also decided to hold annual village unit level and mandal level conferences and also to hold political classes for Kisan Sabha activists at the state and the district level in the coming months. 

(INN)