People's Democracy
(Weekly
Organ of the Communist Party of India (Marxist)
No. 32
August 07, 2005
(Weekly
Organ of the Communist Party of India (Marxist)
|
Vol.
XXIX
No. 32 August 07, 2005 |
Kisan
Council Meeting Held In Dehradun
THE All India Kisan Council of the
All India Kisan Sabha, which met on July 23-24, 2005 at Dehradun, decided to
organise countrywide campaign from September on various issues facing the
farmers of the country. It has also decided to organise a countrywide protest
action on September 29 as part of this campaign. The council congratulated the
state units for crossing 18 million membership. The membership has increased by
more than 16.5 lakhs from 1,71,78,872 last year to 1,88,47,270 this year.
The meeting was held in the
Dehradun, the capital of Uttaranchal state and was inaugurated by AIKS
president S Ramchandran Pillai. In his inaugural speech he said that the last
meeting held at Thiruvananthapuram in Kerala had adopted the updated version of
the Alternative Agriculture Policy, which has since been widely propagated by
the AIKS and AIAWU to lakhs of peasants and agricultural workers through out the
country.
The last 19 months after that AIKS
meeting has seen major political developments in the country. The most important
being the defeat of the BJP led central government in which Left and secular
forces played a sterling role.
The new UPA central government led by
the Congress had promised many things to the peasantry and agricultural workers
in the National Common Minimum Programme. This was in the context of
unprecedented agrarian crisis in the country that resulted from the
liberalisation policies of the BJP regime.
However, said Pillai, during the last
14 months of UPA regime, not a single of their promises made to the peasantry
had been implemented and on the contrary the government was taking extremely
severe anti-peasant measures. The seed bill proposed by this regime was aimed
not at helping the peasantry but was meant to solely benefit foreign and
indigenous big seed companies. Efforts were being made by the central government
to pressurise the state government to enact new marketing laws that would enable
multinational companies to invade the agricultural market. Giant corporations
can now set up private markets, not regulated by the marketing committees.
Subsides for food and fertilisers
were sought to be further slashed and efforts were on to put an end to grain
procurement. The government was refusing to take parliament and people into
confidence as regards the WTO negotiations, the ministerial meeting for which
was due to be held at Hong Kong in December 2005.
In this back ground, concluded Pillai,
this All India Kisan Council meeting would have to decide to launch massive
struggles to bring pressure on the UPA regime and protect the interests of the
mass of the peasantry and agricultural workers.
GEN-SEC
REPORT
AIKS general secretary K Varadharajan
placed the general secretary’s report before the council. Outlining the grave
situation before the peasantry of the country today, he explained several
aspects of the government’s onslaughts against Indian agriculture as a whole.
The peasants and rural poor had welcomed the outcome of the general election 2004, which resulted in the ouster of the BJP-led NDA regime. The vote against the NDA government was also a vote against neo-liberal economic policies that have been in vogue for the last fourteen years. He said that in this backdrop the people expected the UPA government to act without any delay and carry out the tasks of providing relief to the distressed masses of the country. But the track record of the UPA government in the last fourteen months in offices has rather been disappointing. Practically there is no difference between the NDA and UPA regime as far as economic policies are concerned, said Varadharajan.
