People's Democracy

ORISSA

AIKS Plans Campaign on Kisan Issues

Noorul Huda

THE Orissa state Kisan Sabha met on December 7, 2008 at Bhubaneswar under the presidentship of Y Samantaray. Twenty state kisan committee members from ten districts were present. Noorul Huda, joint secretary of AIKS and finance secretary attended the meeting on behalf of AIKS centre. The meeting paid respectful homage to the memory of veteran kisan and communist leader Harkishan Singh Surjeet and other well known national and state level public leaders like V P Singh, P Ramchandran, Prithvi Singh, Iswar Das, Lakshmi Panda, C P Balan, Gurucharan Patnaik, S K Dhar, Ranjit Basu and victims of Mumbai terror attacks and Assam bomb blasts.

Noorul Huda expressed concern over the impact of the current global economic crisis in our economy, particularly the intensification of agrarian crisis in the country as a result of which crop prices are falling steeply and food prices are continuously rising, acute unemployment and pauperisation of rural and urban poor has increased. On the other hand, the UPA government and other bourgeois landlord parties while paying lip service to the cause of peasantry, are not taking effective measures to contain rising import costs and high prices of all essential commodities including foodgrains. Shortage and prohibitive prices of fertilisers and other inputs have led to spontaneous struggles in many parts of our country. Non-remunerative prices of crops ( paddy selling at Rs 700 per quintal) and agri outputs are hitting the peasantry very hard. Devastating floods have occurred in Bihar, Assam and Orissa damaging lakhs of hectares of crops and causing millions of people homeless forcing them to live in miserable conditions for months. In spite of natural calamities like floods, cyclone and drought at regular intervals, the central government and the state government exhibit stark negligence and refuse to pool resources to meet the calamities in a scientific manner. UPA government has not learnt any lessons from the global economic crisis and insist on adopting anti people policies like privatisation of banks, insurance, pension fund and disinvestment of public sector industries. They have forged strategic alliance with USA and signed the Indo- US nuclear deal in a slavish manner under the false notion that India would be accorded the status of a nuclear power. Indebtedness of farmers has reached such proportions that in spite of UPA government�s Rs 70,000 crore debt relief scheme, in the last one year alone more than 16 thousand farmers have committed suicides in various parts of the country. Enactment of Tribal Forest Act and passage of NREGA have not reached the genuine beneficiaries due to tardy and improper implementation and corrupt practices. A large number of peasants do not have BPL cards. On the other hand, extremists and fundamentalist forces are taking resort to terror strikes in the cities and populous places killing many innocent people leaving the government directionless. The recent Mumbai terror attacks have exposed the weaknesses and failures of our intelligence agencies and our unpreparedness to meet the challenge of the terrorists from both outside and inside the country. Inside the country, communalists and fundamentalists of all varieties are having a field day particularly the Sangh parivar lunatics who have targeted the Christian and Muslim minorities all over India.

Fifteen committee members participated in the discussion on the report placed by state Kisan Sabha secretary Abhiram Behera. They were unanimous in endorsing the main content of the report and stated that the problems ailing the peasantry in the state were not much different from those faced by kisans in other non-Left led states in the country. The issues highlighted by the participants relate to landlessness due to lack of land reforms, non issue of pattas for occupationist tenants, non restoration of public distribution system, improper implementation and corruption in NREGA, non remunerative prices of paddy and other crops, extensive and recurring floods damaging crops in large areas, extremely inadequate flood relief and rehabilitation, lack of scientific tackling of floods by the central government, agricultural workers� low wages and other problems, Bangladeshi infiltration issue, identity problem of adivasis, persecution of minority population by the Sangh parivar activists and lack of protection for sharecroppers. The state Kisan Sabha came to the conclusion that its members, beginning from state committee to primary units, from each and every district, must strive to identify the burning local issues, conduct extensive and continuous campaign among the peasantry and based on identification of two or three important issues in each district, mobilise the peasant masses and launch struggle. The shining examples set by kisan activists in Rajasthan and Andhra Pradesh have paid dividends and concentration on issues specific to Orissa will definitely help strengthening the organisation and building powerful movement. Moreover, there are 61 lakh (16.5 per cent) SC and 82 (22 per cent) lakh ST population in the state who are mainly rural, poverty stricken, backward and exploited by the vested interests. The ruling BJD-BJP coalition government has done precious little to improve the living conditions of these people. Therefore the state kisan sabha meeting felt that it is incumbent for the kisan sabha activists to play a significant role in working among these poor and backward masses with a view to building strong organisation among the SC & ST population.

The state kisan sabha took note of the weaknesses of the organisation, lack of proper coordination between the districts and state centre and decided to strengthen both the state and district kisan centres by increasing wholetimers in the centres. In view of the 32^nd All India Kisan Sabha conference slated for September- December 2009, the state kisan meeting decided to hold lower level conferences before the parliamentary elections and district and state kisan conferences after the elections.