People's Democracy

WHEN the ministerial representatives of the government of India go to Hong Kong for the WTO talks beginning on December 13, we must understand they cannot be trusted to speak for the majority of India’s peasants and working people because they represent the interests of the monopolists and landlords and not of small producers and labourers.

In fact, they have actively campaigned to put agriculture on the WTO agenda which has proved disastrous for the vast majority of our people. And we have the world of a man no less than Pranab Mukherjee, the present defence minister who was also the commerce minister in 1994 saying: "I would like to emphasise that India was one of the leading developing countries which initiated from the very beginning of the Uruguay Round of Discussions at Punta Del Este in September 1986 that ‘Agriculture’ should be brought within the purview of GATT".

What is interesting is that he avers this was done as "the poor and developing countries like India were finding it difficult to have access to the markets of agricultural products in the developed and developing countries". But what he fails to note is that 60 per cent of India’s peasantry are engaged in subsistence farming and are even net buyers of grain and for them the question of breaking in to any market does not arise. In fact, their sales are largely distress sales. His India, which was later described by the BJP-led NDA government as "shining India" constitutes no more than 6 per cent of our rural households. The rest are "suffering India", deep in debt, with some 74 per cent living under conditions of privation, driven to die of hunger or to commit suicide in despair.

And in blindly following the class interest of this tiny minority, successive governments of India have done the most terrible things to the people who actually voted them into power. If Pranab Mukherjee’s Congress government was willing to sacrifice the food security of millions for the profit of a handful, Atal Bihari’s NDA went even further. They were prepared to drive thousands to commit suicide to allow a few to profit. His government not only ruined the peasantry by doing away with quantitative restrictions on agricultural imports, a good three years before India was expected to comply with this provision. That they were prepared to do this to an already poor peasantry speaks volumes for how blind their class interest had made them. And even a headlong rush into elections before time was unable to save them from the retribution of the peasantry that refused to believe in their campaign of shining India and defeated them soundly.

As for the poor, after the third front ministry ended the universal Public Distribution System and created the APL/BPL categories, the NDA government followed it up by raising administered prices between a third to double of what they were before, effectively putting the public distribution system beyond the reach of the majority of India’s people. The result was obvious. Despite the decrease in the per capita availability of foodgrains, Atal Behari Vajpayee could boast from the ramparts of the Red Fort of a buffer stock of 6.3 crore tonnes of grain while people went without food as they could not afford the price. But rather than give it to them cheaply, it was sold below BPL prices as pigfeed to the USA and EU. Now even larger quantities have disappeared without a trace and in 2005 the government has less grain in stock than even what is the bare minimum need of the PDS.

What is even more shocking is how despite a possible provision of 10 per cent subsidy allowed by the WTO to protect the Indian farmers, successive governments have even nibbled into the 3 per cent given to them, much of which is being spent on subsidies to fertiliser companies and for storage facilities. Now both electricity and water are under the auctioneer’s gavel. The survival of our rural communities is under threat. Those who have lived in our forests for generations are driven away as "encroachers" while plunderers plunder the trees and forest officials and local bigwigs use the forest laws to bypass land ceiling laws or just take over thousands of acres of government land for themselves.

The NDA government further removed duties on machines like combine harvesters in 2001 bringing down the days of work available for agricultural labourers drastically. And instead of providing alternative employment, rural development and employment schemes were brought down to a third of what they were before. The net result was that not only were the poorest reduced to being trafficked like animals by contractors from one part of the country to another, but also no less than 30 lakh small and marginal land-owners have lost their land each year, joining the growing army of the rural unemployed.

Neither the subsidies of upto 10 per cent nor tariffs of upto 300 per cent, permitted by the WTO, have been used to protect the rural producers from ruin. The NDA government allowed highly subsidised imported products like milk powder, edible oils, apples, arecanut, sugar, tea, coffee, coconuts and cotton from abroad resulting in drastic fall of prices of these products in the country. This has been done without using the available protective mechanisms, leading to thousands of farmers committing suicide all over the country. Even when such mechanisms were used the response was either too little or too late. It is evident that the political will to protect the small producer was absent. In fact there is every reason to believe that neo-liberal thinkers running the government would like to ensure the sale of assets of small producers to corporates and landlords and herd them into the hands of human traffickers to carry away as indentured labour for a price. This is likely to happen under Mode IV (the movement of natural persons) in the agreement to be worked out in the coming round of talks. They must not be allowed to succeed.

On the other hand, a large number of powerful corporations and individuals are busy leasing in land from owners of tiny fragments who will never be able to get it back. Also, under the fiction of contract farming even larger farmers are likely to become bonded labourers on their own property, tied hand and foot by contract to corporate entities, who in the name of ‘value addition’ now leave only 10 per cent of the fruits of labour with the farmer, who does most of the work and gets looted by the corporate for all his effort. Obviously there are powerful class interests that dictate these policies of our governments that blind them even to the fact that they can lose elections on account of them.

So, obviously one cannot accept the neo-liberal prescription of profits for a handful and destruction for the rest. One must resist it. And resist we will. On December 13, the AIAWU, AIKS and trade unions will join other mass organisations to demand that the Agreement on Agriculture of 1994 be renegotiated and made to serve the interests of the vast majority of farmers who are still small holders and need adequate protection from highly subsidised agri businesses. They will protest against the failure of the Indian ruling classes to provide legal protection to agricultural workers, to farmers in respect of their right to preserve and develop seeds, to the Indian people in protecting their food security, biodiversity and traditional knowledge of plants and agriculture against motivated patenting by multinational agri businesses, none of which are protected adequately under the present WTO regime. Nor do the Indian ruling classes appear to be concerned about them if the contents of the new patent bill and the forthcoming tribal forest bill and seed bill are anything to go by.

On December 20 the All India Agricultural Workers Union will hold a mass rally at New Delhi to remind the UPA government that its promise to pass a comprehensive central legislation for agricultural labour has not been kept; for the implementation of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act and the enhancement of minimum wages; for the public distribution system to reach everyone who needs it; for land reforms to be implemented strictly; for the passage of an effective Tribal Forest Rights Bill; and to ensure the civil liberties and democratic rights of dalits, tribal people and agricultural labour who are under severe attack from the beneficiaries of neo-liberal government policies and WTO dictates today. Already conventions have been held in a number of the northern states to ensure the success of this mobilisation. We are aware that given the class interest of the Indian ruling classes in the field of agriculture, a stiff fight is required to ensure that the food security, employment opportunities and lives of the mass of rural people are protected even at present levels. The struggle to improve their condition will require far greater efforts and organisation requiring a determined battle until victory. Every campaign and struggle must be seen as part of the long drawn out effort to transform the ugly face of neo-liberal economics in agriculture.