Salient Features of the

Agrarian Crisis Today

N

OBODY can deny that a serious crisis has broken out in agriculture once again. The hollowness of all tall claims of reforms, from ‘Zamindari Abolition’ to ‘Green’ and ‘White’ revolutions and the present day WTO-regime, which successive governments led by Congress and BJP have made, stand exposed in the face of starvation deaths of rural poor and suicides by farmers. Suicides due to heavy indebtedness, crop failure or inability to find a market for the produce are not limited to small peasantry, they occur even among well-to-do farmers in developed areas. The demand for remunerative prices has now been pushed back to the demand of minimum support prices and guaranteed procurement or in other words freedom from distress sale, which had so far been the demands of the small and middle peasants. On the other hand, pauperization of peasantry has resulted in swelling the ranks of agricultural/rural/migrant labourers, i.e., free labourers without any economic, social or legal protection.

The crisis has led to a new phase of agrarian unrest. Hot winds of discontent are blowing in the east as well as in the west. This time, the original exponent of the ‘west wind’ (farmers’ movement) Mr. Sharad Joshi stands on the other side of the fence. The erstwhile World Bank official-turned-farmer-leader today advises the BJP-led NDA govt. on matters of agricultural policy. Many other leaders of that farmers’ movement are busy with NGO-sponsored seminars and workshops and spend most of their time abroad. The so-called pro-peasant regional parties are in fact kulak-dominated parties faithfully implementing the WTO agenda in agriculture and are going back on land reforms. Even the performance of the CPI(M)-ruled West Bengal is no different. The party has sacrifices the interests and struggles of the rural poor at the altar of kulak lobby’s interests. That is why the CPI(M) has watered down the land redistribution clause in its “updated” party programme by deleting the provision of seizing the land for redistribution without any compensation. By their own confession, CPM-led Kisan Sabha, in many cases, was found brokering land deals on behalf of the kulaks and wage struggles of agricultural labourers were being increasingly neglected, wages being left completely at the mercy of market forces. For PWG and MCC, if practice speaks of the real policies pursued, as taught by Lenin, agrarian struggle has for long been a forgotten and forbidden agenda. They are also found brokering land deals on behalf of landlords/kulaks and do not hesitate to use guns against landless poor if they dare to ask the landlord/kulak to vacate the illegally occupied land. The practice of extortion of levy from tendu-patta and kattha contractors has now developed into hobnobbing and commission sharing with jungle mafia and the nexus of ruling politicians, contractors and police-administration, which swallows the lion’s share of the funds meant for development. Here too wages are left completely at the mercy of market forces. Ironically on this question the social-democrats and ultra-revolutionaries are found on the same footing, albeit from two diametrically different positions.

The Revolutionary Approach

The only answer to the present day crisis is complete reversal of the policy – a complete rejection of landlord path and WTO-regime and adoption of a radical agrarian reform programme – a peasant path of agrarian reform based on land to the tiller. Only a people’s government can carry out the agenda for overall development of agriculture in the interest of the broader agrarian population, industry and the nation in general. We must intensify our efforts to mobilize the masses to achieve our cherished goal in this new situation.

The revolutionary approach takes the task of mobilizing the rural poor and defending their interests as the point of departure. Its highest priority remains to organise agricultural labourers and other rural labourers as an independent class force – the rural proletariat, and to protect the specific interests of marginal and small farmers in the face of a deepening agrarian crisis. Present agrarian crisis marks a major opportunity for us to boldly address the issues of the middle peasantry without in any way diluting our primary commitment to the rural proletariat. We must continue to uphold the revolutionary programme of radical land reforms and must in practice intensify the struggle for implementation of land reform laws while raising the demand for lowering the land ceiling, release of ‘forest’ land (such land as are left-out vacant for five years or more), reclamation of land so as to make more land available for redistribution. At the same time, we must intensify the struggle for minimum wages, for a separate legislation in states and centre for the agricultural and rural labourers.

Organising Rural Proletariat is the Key to Combat the Crisis

The key to unleash a new dynamism on the agrarian front is to organize the agricultural and rural labour – the rural proletariat as a class and motivate them for a powerful political assertion. This class not only makes the largest contingent of the proletariat but is also capable of leading most powerful and militant struggles against feudalism, imperialist globalisation and their domestic lackeys including the communal fascist forces. So we must concentrate our efforts on organizing them in their class organizations, from panchayat to national level, and at the same time, must maintain close ties with them to transform them into a strong political force.

The Party has undertaken a massive membership campaign among agricultural and rural labourers to form an All India Khet Mazdoor Sabha. The experiences of the campaign so far offer several insights for the movement.

A campaign of massive contact and direct dialogue with the rural proletariat cutting across party boundary has yielded rich results. The more we organize rural proletariat, the more potential there is for an unprecedented expansion of our mass base, especially among dalits, adivasis and working women. Links with both urban working class as well as peasantry will go stronger, as will our potential to combat not only feudal-criminal gangs but also anarchist hoodlums.

We must adopt popular mass forms, and turn membership campaigns and conferences into festivals of the rural poor to form their own organization. Panchayats must be developed as centres of struggles, fighting for the hegemony of the rural poor, who are the broad majority, over all affairs in the Panchayat area. Committees of the Khet Mazdoor Sabha can also play the role of Jan Nigarani Samiti (People’s vigilance committee) to intervene in the activities of the Gram Panchayat and in developmental work. Panchayats can in this way become inspiring centres of organised resistance. ?

(This is excerpted from an orientation paper written by Comrade Swadesh Bhattacharya for the Khet Mazdoor recruitment campaign -- Ed.)