People's Democracy

TAMILNADU

AIAWU Forms Reception Committee For

All India Conference in Tiruchi

S P Rajendran

A 501 member reception committee has been formed at Tiruchirappalli for the seventh national conference of the All India Agricultural Workers� Union, on March 30.

The conference will be held in July this year at this �Rock City� situated in central Tamilnadu.

The general secretary of AIAWU, A Vijaya Raghavan MP, who inaugurated the meeting to form the reception committee, said that the seventh national conference which would be held on the soil that gave birth to Venmani Martyrs would give impetus to the powerful struggles for the cause of agricultural workers.

The AIAWU is representing nearly 45 million agricultural workers and an overwhelming majority of agricultural workers in Kerala are the members of the union; in Andhra Pradesh alone, there are 1.5 million agricultural workers registered as members of the union, he said.

The only big union of the Indian agricultural workers, AIAWU is fighting for land reforms, proper implementation of NREGA, better wages, house pattas, universal PDS, etc., while the UPA government is implementing the neo-liberal, anti-farmer  policies, Vijaya Raghavan said.

The agricultural workers constitute the most important part of the agrarian movement in the country. They form a link between the urban working class and peasantry. They are the worst exploited socially, economically and politically. A big chunk of them come from the scheduled castes and scheduled tribes who still continue to be the victims of social oppression at the hands of caste  Hindu vested interests.

In this background, the picture of rural India is grim. First thing is, the numbers of rural landless have grown by leaps and wounds over the decades, from 4.74 crores in 1971 to 10.74 crores in 2001. At present the figure could be 15 crores. Secondly, of the 77 per cent people living on Rs 20 or less per day, the majority are agricultural labourers. Their days of work have come down from 123 in the eighties to 100 in the nineties and less than 53 today.

Describing these issues, Vijaya Raghavan charged that the UPA government is not ready to address the problems of rural India.

The senior leader of Tamilnadu communist movement and the state president of AIAWU, G Veeriayan presided over the meeting.

The meeting elected T K Ranga Rajan MP, as president of the reception committee. S Thirunavukkarasu, state general secretary of the union was elected as secretary of the reception committee and S Chandran as treasurer. Veteran leaders of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) R Umanath, N Sankariah, N Varadharajan and Pappa Umanath are the patrons of the reception committee and G Veeriayan will be the honorary president of the committee.

CPI (M) leaders A Lazar, S Noor Mohammed, S Sridhar, G Rathnavelu, Tamilnadu Vivasayikal Sangam leaders K Balakrishnan, K Md Ali, R Chandra, AIAWU state treasurer G Mani and leaders of fraternal organisations attended the meeting.