People's Democracy

Agricultural Workers to Expose NDA’s Anti-Peasant Policies

THE All India Agricultural Workers Union (AIAWU) has asked the rural masses to beware of the false promises the NDA government is making, in view of the general elections likely to take place in a couple of months. This is borne out by the fact that while the BJP led government is congratulating itself for a possible 8 per cent rate of growth, the production of food grains at some 197 million tonnes in 2003-04 is not likely to exceed that in 1995-96 and will be 14 million tonnes below the level of the pre-drought years.

This means there is less food to go round, at 132 kg per person per year, which is lower than what was available during the great Bengal famine of the 1940s. What is worse is that the BJP government’s policies are responsible for this. Rural development expenditure has come down from 1.6 per cent of the GDP to 0.8 per cent. Now proposals are afoot to mechanise farming, corporatise holdings and reverse whatever paltry land reforms have taken place.

The AIAWU has accused the BJP government of resorting to shock treatment by abandoning the public distribution system (PDS) and almost doubling the prices of grain. Rice is now being sold at Rs 6.90 per kg to India’s people but is subsidised and sold as cattle feed in USA at Rs 4.90 per kg. In the same way, multinationals are ruining our tea trade by rigging the auctions and reducing the price of tea below the cost of production and ruining both plantations and workers in the process. Bank loans are being provided to buy combine harvesters at Rs 15 lakh and render hundreds of agricultural workers out of job. The net result is that while rural India could sustain 60 people out of a hundred at work in the year 2000-01, it only managed to sustain 57 in 2003. This adds the fuel of rising prices to the already blazing fire that has claimed thousands of lives from starvation or suicides by farmers. Already prices have risen by 7 per cent in the last quarter of 2003, and worse is yet to come. 

Meeting at Thiruvananthapuram on December 28, the AIAWU general council has already chalked out a plan of action and this has been concretised in most of the states. There will be a mass campaign and mass actions throughout the months of February and March to ensure that agricultural labour and the rural poor get their due share of resources, and that both work and food are provided by the state if necessary. The AIAWU says it will not allow people to starve or remain unemployed. Intense struggles will be launched for minimum wages, land, house-sites, against mechanisation, for food for work programmes and for the proper implementation of other rural employment schemes.

The AIAWU has further demanded that the government implement the PDS distribution properly, ensure the proper functioning of labour welfare schemes and table the already existing bill for a comprehensive central legislation for agricultural labour in parliament before the elections.

It has urged the people to ensure the defeat of the BJP government in the coming elections. (INN)