People's Democracy

AIAWU Protests Lack Of Measures

The All India Agricultural Workers Union (AIAWU) general secretary, A Vijayaraghavan, and joint secretary, Suneet Chopra, have issued the following statement on July 9, 2004:

WHILE the All India Agricultural workers Union (AIAWU) welcomes the attempt of the UPA government in its budget for 2004-05 to redress the balance by orienting it to rural concerns, we are deeply disturbed that in the pre-budget consultations held by the finance minister, representatives of agricultural workers organisations were completely ignored.

From this perspective, the economic survey of 2004-05 is also most disturbing as it not only presents the inflated figures of last year after the disastrous performance of 2002-03 as the strength and success of the policies dictated by the WTO and IMF. It conveniently forgets the fact that thousands of agricultural labourers and farmers committed suicide or died of hunger as the pro-reform policies have reduced the days of work available to agricultural labourers to less than 70 in a year, which cannot provide even the minimum livelihood, and ruined farmers who were unable to compete with world monopolies in an open market.

From our perspective we believe that ‘reform with a human face’ is not enough as it is based on a mistaken understanding that figures can replace prosperity on the ground. We therefore call for more than ‘pilot programmes’ of food-for-work and employment guarantee, the removal of graded subsidies that have so far led to the BPL sector of the rationing system to function as a fraud with the per capita availability of foodgrains declining to the level of the 1940s.

The AIAWU also demands the institution of a welfare fund for agricultural labourers, fund allocations for implementing a comprehensive central legislation for agricultural labour and land reforms and a rejection of the 2003 legislation on Fiscal Responsibility and Budget Management, to increase the amount available for poverty eradication to at least Rs 30,000 crore and make the allocation for rural development, which has actually come down by 27 per cent this budget. In a country whose population is nearly 120 crore, even this figure works out to only Rs 250 per head. This is not asking too much.

The AIAWU, while firmly committing itself to ensuring the full tenure of a secular government at the centre, will fight for the right of the rural masses to live with dignity and a proper standard of living and will ensure that the anti-peasant and anti-agricultural labour policies dictated by the World Bank are reversed.