In this Issue
Evolve the agenda in the light of the changing context and sharpen the thrust of the movement
In Bhojpur, the heartland of revolutionary agricultural workers movement we inaugurated our first national organization of the rural poor and agricultural labourers at Ara in November 2003 asserting a new phase in the on-going movement. Successfully withstanding all kinds of repression launched by the ruling classes we have been able to expand the horizon of both our movement and organization and today, once again we assemble for our 2 nd National Conference at Andhra Pradesh, the next important centre of struggles of the rural poor and agricultural workers.
The New Situation
and Imminent Challenges
The political situation has changed in more ways than one from the time of our first organizational conference. Taking advantage of the widespread mass discontent against the Saffron regime, the Congress led UPA government came to power and in no time have they started showing their true colours betraying the mandate of the people. The so-called secular assertions of the UPA and its constituents too have suffered a severe debacle. The pursuance of extreme right wing policies by the Congress led UPA government has given new vigour to the BJP. After Jharkhand, Bihar too has been handed over on a platter to the NDA. And now it seems to be the turn of Karnataka. Laloo Prasad led anti-communal, anti-BJP coalition of secular forces whose proponents were none other than our friends from the Left, particularly the CPI(M) leadership has collapsed like a pack of cards. The anger of the people of Bihar against the bad governance of the Laloo-Rabri duo was so livid that the RJD has today become the third party in the state, even below the position of the BJP. This development in fact reveals once again that the UPA is totally ineffective in countering the challenge posed by communal forces in the country. The only way to completely rout all shades of communalism is by pursuing the course of the revolutionary Left. Communal forces can be defeated on a solid foundation of the movement based on the struggles of the working class, the rural poor, the oppressed and Dalit communities and allied democratic forces on a united plank.
Shortly after coming to power the Congress-led UPA government has left the BJP-led NDA combine far behind in prostrating themselves under the pressure of US bosses. Every sphere of national life - economic, political as well as military interests have been negotiable terms for the present government. They have completely surrendered in front of the WTO. They have utterly failed to take any positive step towards the formulation and implementation of such agrarian reforms that might pave the path for solving the problems faced by the rural poor and peasantry who are forced to commit suicide as they are no longer able to sustain the onslaught of hunger and starvation. Instead of making an attempt at taking some positive step in favour of the peasantry and agricultural workers they have surrendered the interests of Indian agriculture to WTO following the dictates of their imperialistic mentors and opened the way for corporatisation of Indian agriculture. Owing to the pressure all around, they have indeed tried to put on a ‘human face’ by bringing in the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) but at the same time they have limited its potential for ameliorating the burden of the poor by restricting its implementation to only one-third of all the districts of the country and to only one member of the family for a period of 100 days. If one looks at it from another perspective it becomes clear that this Act in fact legitimizes the marginalization of two-third of the nation’s rural population from their right to work and in the districts where it is implemented, 80% of the working population is actually denied work. Despite all this we must take the implementation of the NREGA as a decisive victory of our struggle and movement. Today AIALA is the only organization at the national level that is trying to put forward the economic and social rights of the agrarian labourers in terms of a concrete political agenda championed by the on-going movement. We have been fighting for a comprehensive national legislation for agricultural workers in a sustained manner for all these years. The NREGA can come forward as an important component of the demand for such legislation if we are able to organize a popular mass movement for its implementation by organizing the rural poor and agricultural labourers, especially in Bihar where the state government has agreed to include all the districts under this scheme. We have seen how the Food for Work Scheme launched in terms of a dress rehearsal of the NREGA in most areas had become a ‘golden egg’ for the officers-contractors-political leaders forming a kind of nefarious nexus but at the same time, it can act as a crucial weapon if we are able to intervene in this process in an effective and militant manner. It can indeed be turned into an important tool for the mobilization and assertion of the rural poor and agricultural labourers and we can translate their strength into a veritable movement. We will discuss this aspect at length in the section titled ‘The Agenda of the Movement’. Let us now focus our discussion on the socio-economic aspect of rural India and its ups and downs, so that we are able to sharpen the agenda of our movement in the light of our understanding.
Sharpen the thrust of the movement
There were three cardinal aspects in the agenda we pursued in our struggles in the country-side: land, wage and dignity. Owing to the changes in the present context we have added the issue of development and people’s control to our agenda to give a new edge to the movement in the countryside. Our older agenda too has to be re-articulated by incorporating the needs of the present situation. Come let us discuss in detail each and every issue raised in the agenda:
Land
The agenda of land reform is no longer on the cards of any of the state governments of the country. Even attempts are being made to turn upside down the process of land reform in most of the states including the Left ruled West Bengal . Land ceiling laws are being either relaxed or special subsidies given to benefit the industrial houses and multinational companies. The numbers of the landless are at the same time increasing rapidly. While cultivable land is being handed over on lease for real estate development, the dwellings of Dalits and Adivasis that have been there for years and years together are being evacuated forcibly. This attitude of the government has completely eclipsed the process of taking over and redistributing the ceiling surplus lands. There is also a tendency to re-capture the lands previously distributed under the Ceiling Act. Taking advantage of the loopholes of the legal system, the land that was meant for distribution among the landless sections of the rural poor are mostly being re-captured now by the erstwhile zamindars with the active connivance of the police and administration and in this process they have aligned themselves with the neo-rich and the neo-Kulak forces forming a new kind of nexus. The problem of land for homestead has assumed major significance today and in this context, the promised allocation of 4 decimal of land to the landless has proved to be utterly false. The dislocation of Adivasis from the forest tracts they had occupied for generations is attaining terrible proportions and all this is being done at the behest of the Supreme Court according to the directives issued in a circular by the Ministry of Forest and Environment. As per one statistical record, in 11 states around 12 lakh hectares of land that traditionally belonged to the Adivasis have been taken over by the non-Adivasis despite the legislation that prohibits transfer of tribal land. Inspite of all this, the Manmohan Singh government is vacillating to bring in the Tribal Bill. Therefore, in today’s context the movement for land has to be widened further. We must intensify the movement for the capture of ceiling surplus lands, benami lands, government gair-mazarua lands as well as develop effective strategies of resistance against the continuing displacement of the poor by the zamindar-kulak-police-administration nexus. Along with the movement against the government’s attempts of reversing the land reforms, we have to also prepare ourselves for leading popular movements on a wider scale for the allocation of land for housing and shelter. The movement for protecting land rights of the Adivasis, their forest tracts, and traditional rights over ponds, etc, has to be strengthened. We need to make demands on our respective state governments to update the land records and publish a white paper on the same as well as to decrease the limit of the ceiling.
In the context of the movement for land we need to keep in mind that the issue always inflicts a decisive blow on the bourgeois-landlord state but if we are unable to expand and translate this movement in political terms then this whole movement becomes embroiled in the quagmire of economism into which both leaders and activists degenerate. We need not forget this teaching of Comrade Charu Mazumder: “How many quintals of grain have been seized or how many bighas of land have been acquired by the peasants – economism prevails when one thinks of struggle on these lines. They never think of measuring whether the fighting consciousness of the peasants has increased or not. So they never make any effort to develop the class consciousness of the peasants” which is to say “it is possible to make land reform in the countryside only when the power of feudalism is routed out forever.”
Wage
In our inaugural conference we had brought forward the vast segment of newly emerging agricultural workers as a revolutionary class of rural society on whose shoulders lie not only the responsibility of giving alternative socio-political leadership to the rural society but also the onus of instilling changes in the national political scenario and becoming the harbingers of development and democracy. There is intensification in the process of proletarisation of the rural poor and small peasantry and simultaneously the numbers of agricultural labourers and rural workers is evidently on a qualitative rise. And in the light of statistics this fact becomes even clearer. In the agrarian sector, there is a continuous decline in the scope for employment of agricultural workers. In 1981 on an average an agricultural worker had 123 days of work; in 1991, the number of days of work fell down to 100 and in 2001, it became 78 days only. In 2003 it declined further to 72 days. In rural areas, several non-agricultural sources of employment are coming forth and for the time being they are able to engage agricultural labourers and rural labourers. But even in this segment the scope for employment is declining steadily owing to the onslaught of neo-liberalization. This has consequently resulted in checking the rise in wages. In rural non-agricultural sectors, the scope for employment is becoming mostly male-centric and in agriculture, women are replacing men. The numbers of women agricultural workers are increasing continuously. The reason for saying this is to point out that the question of employment is becoming a key issue of rural life and the backward and ailing agricultural system is in no position to address it. Consequently we see that a large section of the agricultural workers keep wandering around the countryside, trying to find some sort of employment in the non-agrarian sector while the other half flee to different parts of the land in search of jobs enduring harsh living conditions. Under the prevailing circumstances, the movement for wage has to be fought in a wider context. We have to give emphasis to the struggle for hiking wages, through united assertion, in the non-agrarian sector particularly where work is underway in several government schemes simultaneously with the struggle to raise existing low wages to the government approved rates in the agricultural sector. AIALA must spearhead the movement for wages in the rural regions by organizing the different categories and sub-categories of newly emerging workers working in various sections of the evolving non-agrarian sector. The question of the rights of the leaseholders and the share-cropping marginal farmers must also be raised in the context of the wage movement. We must understand that the ruling classes would try to make ineffective the emerging contradictions between labour and capital in the rural society through their pursuance of a reformist agenda and the NREGA is also a part of this package to cool down the simmering discontent. The only befitting reply to this elaborate project of the ruling class would be to turn the issue of rural employment and wage into an offensive agenda of the movement. Seizing the issue of implementation of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, we must strongly intervene in the process and ensure the widest possible participation, and thereby, assertion of workers. From the depths of this movement we must sharpen our critical perspectives, articulate alternative slogans and place new demands. Along with the following slogans we must pledge anew to intensify the movement for employment and wage.
Dignity
The issue of dignity of the poor landless peasants has been a central question for our movement. Long before raising the slogan of social justice, there have been numerous valiant movements fought in rural pockets by the poor landless peasants on the question of caste inequality, social oppression, the honour and dignity of women, etc. leading to the demand for establishment of a socio-political regime of landless peasants - today’s agricultural workers. The issues of sitting on a cot, safe-guarding the dignity of daughters and daughters-in-laws have all been part of the broader canvas of political struggles waged in the country in the past. These had indeed shaken the feudal roots of the political establishment. Even today these questions have not lost its relevance and is an important issue for a very large section. The social environment of the villages reflect new forms of medieval barbarism and unequal socio-cultural relations displayed through discriminatory behavioral practices by the emerging neo-rich Kulak segment that has arisen from the womb of erstwhile feudalism. The incident that has occurred in the Mansa district of Punjab unveils this aspect clearly. Even as the question of dignity of the poor and agricultural labourers has incorporated newer dimensions, the question of the dignity in the social life of Dalits, poor, and agricultural workers is being brought forward in a more comprehensive manner. From health and education to housing, roads and cleanliness, drinking water, social security, and such allied issues have become the burning problems that challenge their existence and the agricultural labour movement has to incorporate them at the centre.
Development
Today the word ‘development’ has become the catch word. It has different meanings for different people. The moment the word ‘development’ is uttered, talks about schemes to usurp the development fund and to gain control over these programmes start simultaneously. For big contractors, bureaucrats and the ruling elites it straight away means bargain for a stake in the commission; sometimes they manage to pocket the entire loot and the scheme remains on paper only and all this happens at the cost of denying the workers’ their right to work and wage. That is why for the workers and the rural poor, ‘development’ means intervention in the schemes for development on the basis of the struggle for control, in which the question of employment and wage will have to be vigorously raised. We need to understand that in the rural areas, in an atmosphere of entry of capital through different reformist schemes, every struggle for work and wage will be a straight fight against the attack of capital, new economic policies and the existing state structure and its feudal remnants. To look upon this in simplistic terms as movement for reform would be to effectively negate the aspect of political assertion and intervention of the rural workers and poor peasants.
We need to certainly bring forward the idea of development with a pro-people orientation against the ruling class’s concept of accommodating the labour power, in which the issue of equal participation and the qualitative transformation of the living conditions of the common man is completely missing. Today the essence of development revolves only around the NRI, FDI, Sensex , NH , Express Highway , Metrorail, estate business, mobile revolution, LPG (liberalization-privatization-globalization), etc.
The guidelines to development evades issues like landlessness, unemployment, migration, the inadequate provisions of health and education, housing, potable water and cleanliness for the common man, natural disasters like flood, drought, food security, social security, increasing onslaught of epidemics and usurpation of the social and economic rights of the Dalits, the poor and the women. The conspiratorial politics that operates on the logic of the growth rate-sensex is rolling out many such discourses of development. The sad part of it all is that a vigorous stream of the Left forces has been dragged into furthering the same ruling class agenda. Being one of the foremost representatives of the working class we need to strongly intervene in this situation and accept the challenge of turning around this discourse on development.
People’s control
In view of the increasing discontent among people against the declining credibility of Parliamentary institutions and their widening gap with the common masses, the ruling class has developed a whole series of so called ‘democratic’ institutions. It is their claim that all this is being done to strengthen democracy at the grassroots and to facilitate the participation of the deprived sections in the various social, political and developmental processes. But the experiences so far garnered demonstrate that this is one more attempt by the ruling classes of trying to expand their reach of power through co-option and, in course of time, these institutions would degenerate into corrupt power-centres, as mere extensions of the existing power. In spite of this, since these institutions are directly associated with the people, and people have certain expectations from them, we must effectively intervene in these with the slogan of people’s participation and control, and must strive to transform the Panchayats into platforms of struggles of the rural poor. Our slogan of people’s control over representative institutions and developmental schemes will take our struggles to newer heights. This can develop new awareness regarding accountability of Panchayats towards the people and can fight with the common tendency of trailing behind the Panchayats. A new history of people’s assertion may be written by combating feudal forces, neo-rich Kulaks and mafia who have unchallenged sway over these institutions. This fighting spirit of the people will become the launch-pad for ending the politics based on client-patron relations and the people will not hesitate then in demanding the accountability of their MLAs and MPs. Come, let us make the movement for people’s control over the representative institutions and developmental schemes more vocal.
1. (a) Intensify the movement for the implementation of the NREGA! Ensure the guarantee of job card to every poor!
(b) If there is no work and no proper wages, there can be no growth in agriculture and no development!
2. (a) Declare a militant, people’s resistance movement against the loot in the development schemes, and against corruption and scams! Intensify the movement for education-health-shelter and for road-electricity-water!
(b) No to people’s representatives without people’s concerns!
(c) There is no need of Panchayats and BDOs if there is no development!
3. Make the use of the fund of MPs-MLAs-Mukhiyas transparent.
4. Roll back the policy of surrender before the WTO.
5. Give a befitting reply to every act of repression and oppression! Unite to build a revolutionary struggle of the peasantry for a revolutionary upsurge!
Popularize AIALA all over the country !
CPI(ML) Long live!
AIALA-Khemas Long Live!
 To safeguard the interests of Indian agriculture from the destructive tentacles of the WTO and to guarantee its self reliance and security, intensify the struggle for an alternative agricultural policy based on comprehensive land reforms.
Link the NREGA to the development of rural infrastructure, flood and drought proofing, and fulfil the needs of irrigation.
Intensify the struggles for improving the conditions of existence; to ensure equal pay for equal work; to guarantee maternity benefits for women workers and crèche facilities for children; to ensure the payment of pension to the old, the disabled and the widowed; to ensure pension and insurance coverage to the workers; to guarantee social and economic security to the migrant workers.
Waive off the loans of poor workers; ensure the fresh distribution of interest free loans and make available agricultural input commodities at a subsidized price to small farmers.
Make comprehensive plans for the proper rehabilitation of the victims of natural disasters like the Tsunami, earthquake, cyclone, etc. Ensure complete rehabilitation of the victimised families in state sponsored extremist violence in Karbi Anglong-NC Hills of Assam.
Intensify the movement for the withdrawal of TADA cases imposed on the leaders of mass movements. Withdraw all cases framed against the leaders of agricultural workers during various people’s struggles. Withdraw the false charges made under Gangster Act on CPI(ML)-AIALA leaders in U.P.
Intensify the struggle for the immediate and unconditional release of Comrade Rameshwar Prasad, the National General Secretary of AIALA and all other leaders of mass movement who have been put behind bars.
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