People's Democracy

GENERAL STRIKE ON FEB 24

AIKS Asks For Solidarity Actions Nationwide

MEETING at Hyderabad on January 30 and 31 with S Ramachandran Pillai in chair, office bearers of the All India Kisan Sabha (AIKS) have urged upon the peasants and agricultural workers of the country to come out into the streets on February 24 in large numbers. They must organise picketings at different spots in support of the general strike that has been called for by the eight major central trade union organisations including the CITU, AITUC, INTUC and others.

The strike has been called against the anti-people policies of the Vajpayee government such as reckless closure and privatisation of industries, wholesale retrenchment in public and private sectors, resulting in galloping unemployment, etc, and also in defence of the right to strike.

At the same time, peasants and agricultural workers are also facing the brunt of the same anti-people policies of liberalisation, privatisation and globalisation (LPG). These include reversal of land reforms, decreasing subsidies to agriculture, gradual withdrawal of the government from procurement, wholesale withdrawal of quantitative restrictions on imports resulting in a crash in the prices of many agricultural products, dismantling of the public distribution system (PDS), and gradual privatisation of power and irrigation sector, etc. All this has curtailed the availability of work for agricultural workers, diminished credit facilities to farmers, and put the peasantry at large at the mercy of the corporate sector and multinational corporations. Forced by such circumstances, thousands of peasants have committed suicide.

Hence, the AIKS feels, there is no way out for the rural toilers but to unitedly fight and force the BJP led NDA government to reverse these disastrous policies. The Hyderabad meeting urged the kisan cadres to make the solidarity actions throughout the country, in cooperation with other sister organisations, a grand success. (INN)