People's Democracy

‘Agricultural Workers Will Resist These Policies’

The following is the text of the letter written by the leadership of All India Agricultural Workers Union (AIAWU) to union agricultural minister Sharad Pawar on June 5, 2006 opposing the anti-people recommendations of the ministry in the name of “prudent food management”.

IT is with grave concern that we have heard of the anti-people recommendations of the note prepared for the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs on “prudent food management” by the Ministry of Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution System. These   ecommendations call for the hiking of prices for foodgrains distributed under APL, BPL and various schemes, cutting down allocation of ration card holders and the foodgrain component in wages in Central Government Employment Schemes. The proposal is to cut down allocations by as much as 60.5 lakh tones of wheat, envisaging a cut of Rs.5814 crores of the food subsidy.

Let it be clear that the sort of subsidies being provided ought to be increased and not decreased as is evident from the government’s criminal policy of allowing the Australian Wheat Board Cargill and other foreign grain companies to hoard grain at Rs.750 to Rs.850 per quintal from our markets and deprive the Government’s own procurement agencies of it which are only paying Rs.700 to Rs.750 per quintal and that too not cash down as government-permitted hoarders are doing. This will undoubtedly lead to spiraling grain prices and starvation of those unable to afford them.

 Worse, the government has asked the Australian Wheat Board on 20 February to provide some five lakh tones of wheat at Rs.950 per quintal when they are mopping up the grain in our market at a good Rs.100 to Rs.150 less. Now, US companies with substandard wheat have strong-armed the STC for another contract of 30 lakh tones for which moisture content and safety norms have been inexplicably changed.

Recent reports from Australia indicate that a similar import deal of 1998 involved a kickback of $ 2.5 million approximately, paid into a Cayman islands bank account, so we would advise a thorough enquiry into such blatantly uneconomic deals, as also into that of 1998, and a reversal of the policy of allowing foreign agencies to procure grain cheaply from farmers, 94% of whom own less than 4 hectares each, who are hard pressed to sell immediately after the harvest, and then forced to buy grain on credit to survive, leading to thousands of suicides all over the country.

Moreover, between 1991 and 2001 alone, some 3 crore 30 lakh farmers have lost their lands and as no farm work is available, have become jobless beggars or criminals. Leaving the peasantry to destroy itself in this way in the name of cutting down on subsidies, you are threatening to destroy the security of our country, as the majority of recruits in the army and police are from the peasantry.

This disastrous policy hammered out by those who are not in touch with the ground reality and are encouraging government decisions against the interests of the people who voted for them and in the interests of corrupt multinationals, against the Government’s own Common Minimum Programme, NREG Act and all economic commonsense to cope with India’s peculiar problems, must be rejected by the government.

If these policies are implemented, millions of peasants and agricultural labourers, already facing indebtedness and near starvation conditions in our villages, will come out and resist all such attempts and the resistance will continue until this approach against the very survival of the vast majority of Indians is reversed.

We appeal to you consequently: -

1. To stop all imports of wheat from multinationals selling it at inflated prices and ensure the STC’s procurement effort for the PDS is adequately paid for by increased subsidies that allow it to buy grain at market prices this year at least.

2. All activities of multinationals and hoarders be strictly monitored and de-hoarding processes be unleashed against them, with exemplary punishments for those those taking part in them wherever necessary.

3. All agricultural labourers and marginal farmers be given BPL cards and cheap rice and wheat be made available to all through a uniformly cheap PDS.

4. The grain component of the schemes under the NREG Act should not be reduced. Rather, officials and corrupt contractors either refusing to register people who apply for work under the act or paying less than the wages that are legally due, be punished.

5. All landless agricultural labourers must be registered under the NREGA automatically and be given job cards as at the best of times they cannot get more than 70 days’ work nowadays.

6. All fallow and ceiling surplus lands should be distributed to the landless who should be subsidized to increase agricultural production and ensure food security.

7. The Government’s persistent attempt to by-pass agricultural labour organizations and consulting only landlords and bureaucrats on agrarian policies on the future of agriculture shows that they suffer a blind spot with regard to 28% of our rural population. This must be corrected.