People's Democracy

  Agricultural Labour Comes Forward To Fight

  Suneet Chopra

THE general council of the All India Agricultural Workers Union (AIAWU) met at Bhubaneswar on June 29 and 30, with 58 members and 2 invitees from all parts of the country attending. There were reports from most states of the increasing burden the neo-liberal policies of the UPA government at the centre and the state government, following the WTO dictates, were heaping on the poorest sections of our people who are the least able to bear it.

2004: DEFEAT OF POLICIES

Placing the report, AIAWU general secretary A Vijayaraghavan pointed out how a major factor that had contributed to the end of six years of NDA rule was its anti-peasant policies. The report said those policies had “resulted in starving the rural areas of resources by cutting down funds for rural development to a third of what they were before, leading not only to growing unemployment but also loss of job opportunities; destroyed the public distribution system by almost doubling administered prices, putting it out of reach of those who most needed it: the rural poor and especially rural labour; it ended the assiduously built up system of food security by making food production unprofitable by ending quantitative restrictions on foreign imports and raising the prices of fertilisers, electricity and other inputs. The began to dispossess small producers of resources by handing large tracts of land to foreign multinationals and Indian corporates and reversed the decades old policy of giving land to the tiller, while at the same time it evicted tribals in their thousands from their forest homelands. It encouraged the import of job-destroying machinery like combine harvesters, dredgers, stone-crushers and the like, drying up the job potential rural India always had to cushion our people against the ups and downs of the capitalist market that dispossesses the small owners and thrusts the small producers like agricultural workers weavers and other craftsmen into a vast mass of unemployed.”   

The report noted that the people were aware of this and that was why they had voted the BJP-led government out of power. He pointed out how “while they defeated the BJP in the last election, they also drifted away from the Congress, which could only come to power by cobbling together a coalition with support from the Left parties from outside. And more than that, for the first time in the history of independent India, 61 members of parliament were there from the Left, most of whom came to win their seats by defeating both the BJP and the Congress.” The report then added, “We must be deeply conscious of what this mandate means. It is a defeat not only of the communal forces that the BJP and RSS represent, but also of the neo-liberal policies that the BJP and a section of the Congress are determined to implement in the class interest of global and Indian monopoly capital, despite the damage it is likely to cause to the lives and livelihood of the mass of Indian people.”

CONSIDERABLE DAMAGE

Over the last 15 years this damage has been considerable. The report noted that while the share of value produced by agriculture had come down from 35 per cent of the GDP in 1991 to 26 per cent in 2001 and 24 per cent in 2004, the projected figure for 2006-07 was likely to be even lower --- at 20.7. In sharp contrast to this, the figures of those dependent on agriculture for a livelihood had increased from 18.1 crore in 1991 to 23.4 crore in 2001, with the figure being close on 25 crore now. In the period of both the Congress and BJP governments implementing WTO dictated policies, one in every four Indians has been most adversely affected. Even the amount of food available to every citizen has gone down. Food production has fallen in all the major states in the last harvest. Punjab registered a fall of 8 per cent, UP and Haryana 7 per cent, while in Rajasthan it was 40 per cent. In the country as a whole, the estimated foodgrain production for 2004-05 was 206.4 million tonnes, six million tonnes less than last year. For the first time in the history of independent India, the per capita availability of foodgrains has fallen to as low as 143 kg per year, which works out to less than 392 gms praer person per day. Large areas of the country in states like Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, East UP, Bihar, Andhra Pradesh, Tamilnadu and North Karnataka are facing famine conditions or severe deprivation.

This is not because of weather conditions alone, but also because of the encouragement given by the government to diverting lands from food production to cash crops. The share of foodgrain production in agriculture has gone down from 72 per cent in 1991 to 67 per cent in 2001 and 66 per cent in 2004. In Kerala alone, where there were 8.8 million hectares under paddy cultivation in 1975, the figure has now come down to some 2.7 million hectares today. Even the central grain buffer stock that had once grown to 64 million tonnes has come down to 14.7 million tonnes today, nearly 3 million tonnes below the minimum needed to keep the public distribution system going. That this should happen under a government whose Common Minimum Programme boasts of providing a properly functioning system of public distribution of foodgrains and the necessaries of life, of implementing a countrywide employment guarantee and protecting the Dalits (who are among the poorest in the country) is unthinkable.

DEATH SENTENCE ON THE POOR

But the votaries of neo-liberal thinking are heaping misery on misery as a matter of design. Their policies in agriculture are responsible for this mess. The withdrawal of government financial support to agriculture is at the root of this. It was 1.2 per cent of the GDP in 1982 but in 2004 but had come down to only 0.6 per cent in 2004. The misconception behind this move was that private players would fill the gap. They did not. But it ruined the peasantry. Thousands have committed suicide and millions are living today on the verge of starvation. Even in these conditions, however, the votaries of neo-liberal economics are busy fooling the people.

The public distribution system (PDS) is a scandal. For example, while the above poverty line (APL) ration cardholders constitute over 70 per cent of the total, the offtake from APL stocks is only 13 per cent. APL prices are often above the market price while the quality is much worse, as the best of the grain is sold to the market illegally. As for those below poverty line (BPL), the definition evolved in 2004 restricts sales to those whose daily income is below Rs 11. One can only wonder how someone whose daily income is less than the price of a bottle of water can buy grain at any price at all. So while those genuinely in need are denied grain by prohibitive prices and definitions, rats and grain merchants have a field day looting the PDS.

As the report notes: “Economists can speak of this as marginalisation, but we understand it as passing a death sentence on the vast majority of our rural masses, especially agricultural labour. We cannot allow neo-liberal economics to take its course by driving people out of their homes in search of work, being forced to work under conditions of bondage and slavery, with gross underpayment of wages and being subjected to daily humiliation and oppression. If this is marginalisation, we are going to fight it with all the strength we have.”

PROTEST HAS BEGUN

Indeed, struggles have already been launched all over the country. In November December 2004, in a number of states like Kerala, Tripura, Karnataka, Punjab, Haryana, UP, Bihar, Maharashtra, Andhra and Tamilnadu, the demand to pass the National Rural Employment Guarantee Bill was raised militantly. Indeed, it is the support this demand has received among the mass of India’s rural poor that forced the government to table a fraudulent draft that would have made the law toothless; but over 40 amendments have been recommended by the parliamentary standing committee to which it was referred. Now it remains to be seen what will be done by the UPA government with those recommendations. There must be no let up in the effort to ensure a proper National Rural Employment Guarantee Act and to ensure its implementation.

In the same way, most states have responded well to the AIAWU demand to survey and expose the frauds being conducted in the name of targeting families under the BPL schemes, sale of PDS grain, non-provision of rations and the refusal to make new ration cards. The struggles must be intensified.

With regard to drought relief and food for work scheme, struggles have been undertaken against using machines and contractors in most parts of the country, especially in Tanjore and Thiruvarur districts of Tamilnadu where successful struggles were undertaken against the use of combine harvesters. At Koraon in Allahabad district of UP, the AIAWU scored a notable success in drought hit areas where a massive struggle and dharna under the banner of AIAWU was successful is getting 11 tanks dug in 11 villages and also in getting distributed about Rs 22 lakh among the workers as payment. In fact, three officials who were hoping to divert the funds were brought to book.

The action was led by the local CPI(M) MLA, Ram Kirpal, who is also a general council member of state AIAWU.

Similarly, important struggles have taken place on issues like taking over surplus land, privatisation of water, payment of compensation to agricultural labourers in border areas, the dismantling of electricity boards and increased billing charges, compensation to agricultural labour for land diverted to other use, against the eviction of tenants and of forest dwellers. These struggles have taken place in Rajasthan, Punjab, Maharashtra, Bihar, UP, Andhra Pradesh, Tamilnadu, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh and Tripura, to name only a few of the states.

The issue of pensions was successfully raised in Kerala, Tripura and Punjab; Punjab held a state convention in Ludhiana on May 31, to demand stopping the loot of public property in the name of privatising rural schools and dispensaries. Dalit issues across a wide range --- from ensuring pattas, challenging atrocities and getting the guilty punished, to reservations, freeing the bonded labour and ensuring payment of wages held back also --- figured in the reporting from different states.

ORGANISATIONAL MATTERS

The membership for 2004-05 closed at a total of 33,66,778 --- representing a rise of 4,29,517 over that in 2003-04. A quota of 40 lakhs has been fixed for the year 2005-06. Five states have held their state conferences in the period since our last general council meeting in Thiruvananthapuram. They are Tripura, Punjab, Kerala, Andhra Pradesh and Karnnataka. The general council proposed the holding of the sixth all-India conference of the union in one of the northern states next year.

The council passed resolutions asking for the passage of an effective National Rural Employment Guarantee Act as well as of the Tribal Rights Bill in the coming session of parliament, on a comprehensive central legislation for agricultural labour, for an effective and universal PDS, for struggles against the privatisation of water, education, health etc. an, against the attacks on dalits, women and children.

As an action programme, mass actions were announced in the months of October-November, to highlight the issues of employment, PDS, minimum wage and a comprehensive central legislation for agricultural labour, the National Rural Employment Guarantee Bill, and the Forest Act for tribal rights.

TOWARDS MORE ACTIONS

It was decided that various units of the union must plan militant actions on the issue of wages, food for work programmes and their implementation, for land rights to be given to Adivasis settled for generations on forest land, and for land and house sites for agricultural labour, wherever possible. The meeting also stressed the need to struggle for proper implementation of the PDS and the provision of BPL cards to all agricultural labourers, with special emphasis on the problems of Dalits and on taking up the struggle against the atrocities on scheduled castes and tribes with maximum effectiveness. District level conventions of women agricultural labour must also be organised and demand charters of their specific problems be evolved and made instruments of struggle.

On November 29, the AIAWU is organising a March to Parliament in Delhi to highlight the pressing issues related to agricultural workers. At a minimum, 10,000 activists from the northern states would participate in this programme.

The council meeting at Bhuvaneswar closed with a public meeting that was addressed by A Vijayaraghavan, AIAWU joint secretaries Suneet Chopra and Hannan Mollah, CPI(M) state secretary Janardan Pati, AIKS state president Jagannath Mishra, state secretary Prafulla Parhi, and AIAWU state president Nityanand Parida.  The council meeting expressed the hope that militant struggles that were emerging all over the country under the leadership of AIAWU will ensure the proper organisation and defence of the interests of those who are most in need of them under the onslaught of neo-liberal economic policies.

The meeting condoled the demise of Comrades A Kanaran (vice president, AIAWU), V Kesavan (CWC member, AIAWU), M V Narasimha Reddy (former CWC member, AIAWU), E K Nayanar (CPI(M) Polit Bureau member), Nripen Chakraborty (former Polit Bureau member of CPI-M), G Sankaranarayana (Tamilnadu), Mrs Kajal Sarkar (Tripura), Sanyog Sahani, Babajee Paswan, Bodhan Paswan, Soudagar Das, Laxman Mahato, Shivan Tatma, Dharichan Prasad (Bihar).