MAHARASHTRA

Massive State Rally Highlights People�s Burning Issues

Ashok Dhawale

ON April 22, 2008, the birth anniversary of Comrade Lenin, around 25 to 30 thousand people from 25 districts of Maharashtra, triumphing over the scorching summer heat, rallied before the state assembly in Mumbai under the joint leadership of six mass organisations � CITU, AIKS, AIAWU, AIDWA, DYFI and SFI.

This rally was preceded by a mass campaign in March and April, beginning with demonstrations in several gram panchayats and comprising rallies before tehsil offices and district collectorates. Thousands of leaflets were printed in each district. 15,000 printed posters announced the Mumbai rally in all nooks and corners of the state. Press conferences and press statements explained the issues that were taken up.

SEVEN KEY ISSUES

The seven key issues and demands of the Mumbai rally were as follows:

1. Control the price hike immediately. Universalise the PDS and as an interim measure give BPL cards to all poor families and full grain quota to all.

2. Implement the loan waiver scheme for farmers and ensure remunerative prices based on cost of production to all crops.

3. Enact social security legislation for unorganised workers and a comprehensive central legislation for agricultural workers.

4. Stringently implement the Forest Rights Act giving tribals the right to forest land and forest produce.

5. Implement the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme stringently with work to all those who demand it and a wage of Rs 80 per day.

6. Fill in all vacant government posts, clear the SC/ST/OBC backlog. Give unemployment allowance to all jobless and to workers of closed factories.

7. Implement the National Policy for Vendors and give protection to them.

IMPRESSIVE MOBILISATION

The largest mobilisation for this rally came from the Thane and Nashik districts. Over 13,000 people from Thane district and over 8,000 people from Nashik district - most of them adivasi peasant men and women - came all the way to Mumbai by trucks, tempos, jeeps and rail. Mumbai, Solapur, Kolhapur, Ahmednagar and Raigad districts also had good mobilisation. The other districts represented in the rally were Beed, Aurangabad, Nanded, Pune, Parbhani, Nagpur, Yavatmal, Jalna, Buldana, Satara, Amravati, Nandurbar, Dhule, Jalgaon, Hingoli, Sangli and Chandrapur. Azad Maidan, the venue of the rally, was a sea of red and white. Adivasi peasants and unorganised women workers formed the two main pillars of the Mumbai rally.

A delegation met the chief minister Vilasrao Deshmukh and the deputy chief minister R R Patil and submitted a memorandum of demands. The chief minister conceded some demands but the overall impression that the delegation got from these meetings was that the state government was not serious about dealing with the peoples� burning problems. The delegation comprised Narsayya Adam MLA, Dr D L Karad, Dr Vivek Monteiro and Chandrakant Yadav from the CITU, J P Gavit MLA, Rajaram Ozare MLA, Kisan Gujar and Dada Raipure from the AIKS, Kumar Shiralkar and Rajan Kshirsagar from the AIAWU, Kiran Moghe and Madhuri Kshirsagar from the AIDWA, Shailendra Kamble from the DYFI and Bharat Patil and Sarita Sharma from the SFI.

PUBLIC MEETING

The public meeting was presided over by CITU state president K L Bajaj and was addressed by Dr Ashok Dhawale, J P Gavit MLA, Rajaram Ozare MLA, Vinayak Gaikwad, Shankarrao Danav and A B Patil from the AIKS, Narsayya Adam MLA, Dr D L Karad, Uddhav Bhavalkar, Sayeed Ahmed, Amrut Meshram, Shubha Shamim and Dr Subhash Jadhav from the CITU, Kumar Shiralkar, Prakash Choudhary and Dilip Shapamohan from the AIAWU, Mariam Dhawale and Saraswati Bhandirge from the AIDWA, Ashok Pawar and Bhagwan Bhojane from the DYFI, Dada Shinde and Shrikant Bhosale from the SFI and Balan from the Hawkers Union. NRMU general secretary P R Menon also greeted the rally.

All the speakers lashed out at the Congress-led state and central government�s neo-liberal policies which were creating untold miseries for the common people; lambasted the communal conspiracies of the RSS and BJP which had tried to attack the offices of the CPI(M) at Pune and Aurangabad but were strongly repulsed; denounced the regional chauvinist hate campaign against North Indians launched by the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena and the Shiv Sena; dealt with the various issues of the people taken up by this rally; and called for intense, sustained and widespread struggles on these issues so as to be able to create a credible third alternative in Maharashtra.