People's Democracy
(Weekly Organ of the Communist Party of India (Marxist)
No.
46
November 14, 2010
|
Vol. XXXIV
No.
46 November 14, 2010 |
AIAWU’S
MARCH TO PARLIAMENT, NOV 30
Change These
Policies or Perish!
Suneet Chopra
WE are living
today in
times when fraud and deception by the ruling classes in the interest of
corporate monopolies, both Indian and foreign, threaten the people as
never
before. They are doing it not because they are convinced of the
correctness of
these policies but because they benefit individually and as a class,
from the
scores of corruption cases surfacing around us.
The people, on the other hand, are condemned
to lose their assets of livelihood, like land, their access to work and
even to
food for their survival.
Instead of
being concerned
that we are showing an annual growth of 7 to 9 per cent for some time
now, whose
profits are plundered by a handful of billionaires while the majority
of our
people are sinking deeper into despair and poverty, the government is
seeking
to dispossess the people even more thoroughly. Over two lakh farmers
have
committed suicide and over 20,000 rural poor have died of hunger in the
last
few years. In agriculture, the government is encouraging multinationals
and
corporates to lure people to sell land for windfall profits and is
allowing
strong-arm methods to back them up. In these conditions, they face a
future of
penury once these are consumed by the price rise, job loss and the
successive
governments’ lack of concern even for their lives and security. What is
worse,
it is using coercive tactics where people are becoming conscious of
this threat
and resisting the blandishments of those who wish to dispossess them of
their
assets, livelihood and rights as stake-holders in the wealth our
country
produces. As such, the people have no alternative but to unleash
countrywide
struggles in order to get the right to work, the assets to work on and
an
assured access to the necessaries of life, health and education.
DECLINE
OF
AGRICULTURE
Over the
years now, “Shining
India” has been casting a growing shadow of darkness especially in the
rural
areas where the majority of our people live. Today the sustainability
of our
agriculture is threatened. According to a survey by the labour
ministry,
chronic unemployment in the rural areas stands at 11.1 per cent, with
14.6 per
cent of women out of work. This means some four crore rural people have
been jobless
for over six months. What is worse is that now only 45.5 per cent are
employed
in agriculture. Of these too, only 57.6 per cent live in the villages
and 9.9
per cent in urban areas, reflecting either distress migration or the
enormous
shift from rural to urban areas with widespread takeovers of rural land
by
speculators. This is evident from the fact that 7.5 per cent of rural
labourers
are employed in construction work.
The gross
neglect of
agriculture from the Annual Plan of 1991-92 is evident from the decline
of the
share of agriculture from 5.9 per cent of the plan outlay that year
steadily to
3.7 per cent in the Eleventh Plan of 2007-12. It is obvious that the
Indian
state appears to have given up on Indian agriculture altogether,
despite the
fact that the livelihood of over half the Indian people depends on it.
Instead
of encouraging peasant agriculture which continues to provide the most
of employment
to the people of our country, the governments at the centre and in many
states
is encouraging the corporates to take over. To help this process, they
are
allowing increases in the input prices, neglecting irrigation and
consistent
electricity supply, leaving the purchase of agricultural produce
largely at the
mercy of wholesalers, by offering low support prices for crops or
refusing to
set up purchase centres. All this is leading to the ruin of the
peasantry. This
is what led to lakhs of suicides that have taken place in the last ten
years.
Already the area under paddy has come down by 30.58 lakh hectares
because of
drought, including 1.5 lakh hectares in Haryana 2.45 lakh hectares in
Orissa,
6.39 lakh hectares in Bihar, 7.02 lakh hectares
in Punjab and 8.75 hectares in UP. Floods in many areas have
compounded
the problem.
The suicides
of the
earning members of peasant and agricultural labour families, distress
sales of
land under the pressure of debt and the uneconomic returns from
agriculture as
a result of anti-peasant policies have forced some three crore peasants
to join
the ranks of the rural landless and unemployed each year. Now to add to
this,
we have a minimum of ten lakh rural households whose land has been
taken away
for special economic zones (SEZs), infrastructure projects, industry or
for “housing
projects” that are just plain speculative land grabs.
This has
added millions of
unemployed to the growing number of rural workers. Their number is
about 12 to
15 crores today. And the days of work available to them have come down
to a
third of those available in 1990, reflecting almost exactly the
cut-back of
government expenditure on rural development. The mistaken belief is
that a
government retreat from agriculture will allow private investors to
step in and
fill the gap. It has not happened. Private investment fell as
government
investment retreated. In fact, in advanced economies too the
agricultural
sector gets subsidies that are 10 to 30 times what our farmers get.
Moreover, they
are being increased, showing how necessary it is for the state to
subsidise
agriculture and secure an adequate supply of food. Only the government
of
SOARING
PRICES
This is
coupled with the
fraudulent belief that a high cost of production at home can be offset
by
imports. This was proved false when we faced food shortages and had to
buy wheat
at Rs 1350 per quintal while we sold it to foreign companies at Rs 850
per
quintal. The same happened when the central government closed down
seven
fertiliser plants in Bihar,
Agricultural
labour and
the rural poor cannot idly wait to see when the solutions dreamed up by
fraudulent bodies like the Planning Commission and the NAC materialise.
They
earn between Rs 35 and 130 a day but the price of a kilo of tur
dal has gone up from Rs 32 to 80;
groundnut oil from Rs 85 a litre to 122; sugar from Rs 14 a kilo to 36;
wheat
flour from Rs 8 per kg to 16. Even the humble potato has risen for Rs 8
per kg
to 24 over the last year. Even now, despite the government’s promises,
food
prices continue to rise at over 14 per cent when winter is setting.
Soaring fuel
and medicine prices are likely to make life much more difficult than
before.
AIAWU’S
STRUGGLES
The All India
Agricultural
Workers Union (AIAWU) had warned the agricultural labour, as far back
as its
This the
union has
achieved taking up the issue of legislations like the Mahatma Gandhi
National
Rural Employment Guarantee Act to provide alternative employment to
agricultural
labour and the Tribal and Traditional Forest Dwellers Rights Act to
ensure an
alternative asset base for a livelihood for the poorest and most
deprived. In
our union’s depositions before the respective standing committees of
parliament,
we raised the issue of applying for work directly on plain paper; no
use of
machines and contractors; enforcement of minimum wages or Rs 100 per
day,
whichever is higher; proper delineation of wages for piece-work; water,
first
aid and crèches at the worksites; work to be given not further than 5
km from
one’s place of residence; unemployment relief and adequate budgetary
funding
for MNREGA implementation. With regard to the Forest Rights Act, we
ensured
that it would be extended to “Traditional Forest Dwellers” including
those who
may well be Adivasis but are not given SC status by the government. We
called
for a cut-off line based on actual possession, pattas
to all on the proof given by local government officials and the
right to forest produce, among other provisions.
We did not
merely fight
for the passage of these laws; we worked for their implementation. We
took up
the issue of employment guarantee notably in the states of Andhra,
Tripura,
Kerala, Maharashtra, Karnataka,
GOVT
BENT ON MAKING
LAWS
MEANINGLESS
This is all
the more
necessary as the UPA government at the centre no longer needs the
support of
the Left as it was earlier when these laws were passed and a Common
Minimum
Programme adopted. Our representative, Kumar Shiralkar, has been
removed from
the National Committee. Now, by a series of ordinances and amendments
to rules
in the case of MNREGA, this government is attempting not only to make
the law
meaningless but also a vehicle of corruption.
In 2008, to
discredit the
law, the ministry complained to the CAG of a major gap between its
letter and
its implementation. On December 31, 2008, it made panchayats less
accountable
to social audits by saying they could conduct them on their own. Within
24
hours it brought out its infamous notification of January 1, 2009 by
misrepresenting its power under section 6(1) of the act to fix wages to
mean
that it could violate the minimum wages act. On November 11, 2009 the
ministry
issued another notification to shift from labour intensive to material
intensive projects with the construction of a “facilitation centre”
named after
Rajiv Gandhi in each village, violating the rights of panchayats and
bringing
in contractors and corrupt practices.
The January
2008
notification has raised bleats of protest from various members of the
NAC, but
more substantially, legal luminaries like two former chief justices of
India (M
N Venkatachalliah and J S Verma), four former Supreme Court judges (V R
Krishna
Iyer, P B Sawant, K Ramaswamy and Santosh Hegde) and a state chief
justice (A P
Shah), called it unconstitutional, while the noted lawyer in so many
human
rights cases, Indira Jaisingh called it a means to revive “forced
labour”. Now
the Congress president, Sonia Gandhi, has added her voice. So a mass
campaign
to make people conscious is necessary. The shameless manner in which
the
constitution is being violated by the UPA government is obvious from
the fact
that in the Congress ruled Rajasthan, home state of the rural
development minister,
99 workers in Gudaliya village in Tonk district were paid as little as
Re 1 per
day for digging a check dam between April 26 and May 11 this year. This
is
merely one case. So the only thing to do is to build a mass movement of
the
rural poor to resist and reverse these trends. That this is possible is
obvious
from the efforts being made by the NAC and the Congress president to
present
themselves as implementing our demands when in fact their government is
doing
the reverse.
MARCH
TO
PARLIAMENT
The same is
the case with
the Food Bill which has now been put in cold storage as its aspects
like
reducing the quantity of antodaya
grain, raising its price by 33 per cent, retaining a two-tier rationing
system
with the upper tier being too little in quantity and too expensive to
prevent
people being forced to go to the open market anyway, became public and
exposed
the UPA’s character as the supporter of foreign direct investment in
retail
trade and of multinationals’ control on our agriculture. To defend
ourselves,
we must now firmly commit ourselves to a public distribution system
(PDS) that
is universal and provides all necessaries of life to the mass of the
people at
controlled prices. There can be no compromise on this as the
government, in its
bid to corporatise agriculture, intends to drive us off our small plots
of land
and reduce us to migrant labour, begging or becoming the victims of
those selling
body parts. The people need protection from predators in rural areas
and the
AIAWU must organise them to protect themselves.
Legally, we
were able to
get legislation for agricultural labour passed in Kerala and Tripura.
We now
call for a comprehensive central legislation for agricultural labour to
protect
over 10 crore of our fellow citizens, over half of them dalits. The
draft
legislation has been ready since 1980. Successive governments promised
to pass
the legislation but none has done it. Now it is time to raise with a
new
fervour the demand we have been fighting for. Let the world know that
in India there
are laws to protect animals but none for agricultural labour. It is
time this is
changed.
Our state
units have been
demonstrating on these issues for the last couple of months. On
November 30 we
will march to parliament. The marchers will come from Bihar, UP,
Haryana,
Punjab, Rajasthan and Maharashtra. In other states, our units will
mobilise
locally on these demands. The country must know that a good half of the
people
want their share in the fruits of progress that is now restricted to a
favoured
few. Now they are to come out on the streets to fight for their due.
