Dr Ashok Dhawale
President, All India Kisan Sabha (AIKS)
The kisan
march was unique in the way it was conducted with discipline, determination and
a collective display of peasant power. The sight of a sea of red flags moving
in a massive procession captured the attention of people everywhere and the
national and regional media took this visual message to all corners of the
country. No mass protest in recent times has had the nationwide impact as the
kisan march.
The Long March began in Nashik. Twenty-five thousand
farmers, including thousands of women, took the first steps. The March
concluded in Mumbai with over 50,000 farmers. It was an ocean of red – the red
flag of the All-India Kisan Sabha (AIKS), red banners, red flags, red caps and
red placards with our slogans.
The largest mobilisation of peasants came from Nashik
district. Thousands of Adivasi peasants, under the inspiring leadership of AIKS
former state president J. P. Gavit (a seven-time Member of the Legislative
Assembly in Maharashtra from the CPI-M). The next largest contingent came from
the Thane-Palghar district, followed by the Ahmednagar district. Farmers came
from other districts as well. Their numbers swelled on the last two days of the
Long March.
Condemnation
of the BJP's Betrayal
During the past two years, the BJP central and state
government had given certain specific assurances to the Indian peasantry. They
had said that they would accept the demands for a series of concerns, such as:
·
Farm loan waiver.
·
Remunerative prices.
· Implementation of the recommendations
from the National Commission of Farmers (2006), chaired by Dr. M. S.
Swaminathan.
·
Stringent implementation of the
Forest Rights Act (FRA)
·
Increase in various pension schemes
for poor peasants and agricultural workers.
· Compensation for losses sustained by
farmers due to the disastrous pest attacks (such as pink bollworm on cotton).
·
Vesting of temple and pasture lands
in the name of the tiller.
·
Opposition to acquisition of peasant
land in the name of fancy and elitist projects, such as the bullet train and
super highways.
·
Issues connected to the public
distribution system.
· Complete change in the river linking
scheme that is to start in Nashik, Thane and Palghar districts. The AIKS
demands that the tribal villages not be submerged and that the water is made
available to these districts and to other drought-prone districts in
Maharashtra.
Over the past two years, the BJP governments at the
centre and at the state have betrayed the assurances given to the peasantry.
This list of demands and grievances has been ignored. The Kisan Sabha organised
the Long March to condemn the BJP state and central government for its
consistent betrayals.
Background of
mass struggles
The Long March in March 2018 was the culmination of
three years of constant struggle led by the All-India Kisan Sabha (AIKS) in
Maharashtra since October 2015.
A state-wide AIKS campaign called the
Peasants Rights Awareness Campaign was launched for a month from October 5 to
November 10, 2015. Extended AIKS district council meetings were held in 24
districts of the state. AIKS leaders Dr Ashok Dhawale, Kisan Gujar and Dr Ajit
Nawale, along with other state office-bearers, attended all these meetings. In
these meetings, the burning issues of peasant struggle were identified, the
nature of the struggle was discussed, and the steps for organisational
strengthening were decided.
In the second week of December 2015, over
50,000 peasants under the AIKS banner came on to the streets in 29 tehsil
centres of 15 districts in all the five regions of the state on the four issues
of land rights, loan waiver, remunerative prices and drought relief.
On January 7 and 8, 2016 respectively, the
AIKS held two regional-level loan-waiver and drought relief conventions at Selu
in Parbhani district for the Marathwada region, and at Malkapur in Buldana
district for the Vidarbha region. Both were well-attended.
The AIKS and its allied organisations – the
Centre of Indian Trade Unions (CITU) and the All-India Agricultural Workers
Union (AIAWU) – held a joint state convention on October 31 at Parbhani. A call
was given for a joint action on January 19, 2018. That day, over 1,33,000
workers, peasants and agricultural workers held a massive joint state-wide jail bharo [fill the jails] stir for
their demands against the BJP-led central and state governments. The largest
number of those arrested – over 92,000 – was of the AIKS.
On January 28, the AIKS held a state-level
convention in Nashik that gave a clarion call for an unprecedented state-wide
siege (mahapadav) of 100,000 peasants
from March 29 onwards in Nashik city. This struggle call was the culmination of
the six-month long AIKS campaign in Maharashtra outlined above. Two lakh
persuasive and attractive leaflets and 12,000 posters for the campaign were
published by the AIKS and they were distributed to all the districts in the
convention itself. District councils later also published thousands of
leaflets.
From February 7 to March 1, 23 AIKS district
conferences were held after village and tehsil
conferences. They prepared for the struggle and also strengthened the
organisation.
One lakh peasants lay siege to Nashik
As a result of all these intensive
preparations, the AIKS held a historic one lakh-strong independent state-wide
rally on March 29, 2016. The AIKS also held an unprecedented day and night
sit-in satyagraha for two days and
two nights on March 29-30 at the CBS Chowk in the heart of Nashik. This satyagraha paralysed the city. The
AIKS highlighted four issues for our struggle:
·
Land
rights under the Forest Rights Act (2006).
·
Loan
waiver for peasants.
·
Higher
remunerative prices.
·
Drought
relief.
This militant peasant action received massive
and sustained coverage in both print and electronic media. Sections of the
electronic media covered it live on both days. This struggle placed the AIKS
for the first time in a long time at the centre stage of the peasant movement
in Maharashtra.
The rally was addressed by CPI(M) General
Secretary Sitaram Yechury, AIKS General Secretary Hannan Mollah, renowned
journalist P Sainath, AIKS leaders Dr Ashok Dhawale, J. P. Gavit MLA, Kisan
Gujar, Dr Ajit Nawale and leaders of other mass organisations.
On March 30, the beleaguered Maharashtra
Chief Minister Shri Devendra Fadnavis invited the Kisan Sabha for talks. A one
hour discussion was held with the Chief Minister, three other Ministers and
senior officials in the Vidhan Bhavan in Mumbai in the midst of the assembly
session. Some of the demands were conceded, but were never implemented. The
AIKS, therefore, began concerted struggles for their implementation.
Struggle for Drought Relief
On May 3, 2016, around 1000 peasants and
students from all the eight districts of the Marathwada region, led by the AIKS
and the Students Federation of India (SFI), broke two police barricades and
marched right inside the compound of the Aurangabad Divisional Commissioner’s
office. This militant action was conducted for the burning demands related to
the grim drought situation in the region. The agitators occupied the office for
over an hour until the officers agreed to hold a meeting with the AIKS-SFI
delegation the next day, in which all officials dealing with drought-related
issues were summoned from all the eight districts. For two days and one night on
May 3 and 4, all the agitators camped right outside the Commissionerate.
Under this pressure, in the meeting that was
held on May 4, most of the major demands that lay within the administration’s
purview were conceded. The specific demands that were conceded related to the
provision of drinking water, work and wages under MNREGA (Mahatma Gandhi
National Rural Employee Guarantee Act of 2005), fodder for cattle, agricultural
inputs for peasants, fee waiver for students, land issues related to temple
lands and forest lands and so on. The grave nature of the drought and the
militant actions of the AIKS and the SFI forced the print and electronic media
to cover the Aurangabad struggle.
10,000-Strong ‘Coffin Rally’ in Thane
The AIKS led a 10,000-strong novel ‘Coffin Rally’ in
Thane city, near Mumbai on May 30, 2016 to focus on the issue of peasant suicides.
The peasants carried bamboo frames
(called tirdi in Marathi) covered with white cloth, on which
dead bodies are carried. This dramatically highlighted the grave issue of
suicides of debt-ridden peasants in Maharashtra. This rally, which was
addressed by AIKS President Amra Ram, was widely covered by the media,
especially since it highlighted the grave issue of mounting peasant suicides.
The subsequent state conference at Talasari in Palghar district on May 31 and
June 1 was attended by AIKS General Secretary Hannan Mollah.
50,000-Strong Maha-gherao in Wada
On October 3-4, 2016, over 50,000 Adivasi
peasants, women, youth and students from various tribal districts of
Maharashtra held a gherao of the
house of the BJP Tribal Development Minister at the sub divisional centre of
Wada in Palghar district. The struggle was jointly led by the AIKS, All India
Democratic Women’s Association (AIDWA), Democratic Youth Federation of India
(DYFI), SFI and Adivasi Adhikar Rashtriya Manch (AARM). The main issues were
the stringent and immediate implementation of the Forest Rights Act,
malnutrition-related tribal child deaths, work and wages under MNREGA, the
plight of the PDS, health services and the educational problems of tribal
students.
The gherao
continued for 16 hours and all highways leading from Wada to Mumbai, Thane,
Bhiwandi, Palghar, Dahanu, Talasari, Surat and Nashik were completely blocked.
The minister had fled a day before in fear of this action. When the people refused
to move, the Minister had to send the state Tribal Development Commissioner for
talks with the delegation and had to send a fax agreeing to a high-powered
meeting in the state secretariat at Mumbai on October 7. It was only after a
four-hour nightlong discussion with the Commissioner, where he conceded many
demands, that the gherao was lifted
at dawn on October 4 with a huge public meeting.
The meeting of the delegation with the Tribal
Development Minister, half a dozen secretaries of related departments and half
a dozen district collectors of tribal districts took place in Mumbai on October
7. It continued for over five hours. The minister was forced to concede several
long-standing demands about FRA implementation, malnutrition-related tribal
child deaths, MNREGA and PDS-related demands, education and other issues. The
minutes of the meeting and a special government circular were released to all
concerned officials in the state, which put the demands conceded in writing.
This struggle resulted in a major victory. There was some initial progress in
implementation, but it then floundered.
Whipcord Rally at Khamgaon
On May 11, 2017, the AIKS
organised an ‘Aasood’ (Whipcord) State Convention followed by the ‘Aasood’
State Rally to the house of the BJP state Agriculture Minister at Khamgaon in
Buldana district of Vidarbha region to focus on the issues of peasant suicides,
loan waiver and remunerative prices. Mahatma Jotirao Phule had written a
celebrated book in 1881 titled The
Whipcord of the Peasant (Shetkaryacha Aasood). It was from this that the
Whipcord Rally was named (the whipcord is a form of braided cotton, used to
make cloth or whips).
All these independent struggles over two years put the
Maharashtra Rajya Kisan Sabha for the first time in the mainstream of the
peasant movement in the state and helped it to become a key constituent of the
united peasant struggle that began in June 2017.
Historic Farmers’ Strike
In the historic united Farmers Strike that lasted for
11 days from June 1 to 11, 2017, the AIKS played a crucial role. Farmers
refused to get their milk, vegetables and fruits for sale in the markets in the
cities. The AIKS took the lead in bringing other farmers’ organisations together
to continue the strike when some blacklegs tried a sell-out in a midnight
meeting with the Chief Minister on June 2/3. Due to his role in opposing this
sell-out at that meeting, AIKS state general secretary Dr Ajit Nawale was
elected Convenor of the Coordination Committee of Farmers’ Organisations. A
massive joint Maharashtra Bandh was successfully held on June 5 to support the
farmers strike, followed by other large mass actions.
On June 11, a group of five Ministers of the state
government was forced to hold talks with the Coordination Committee and they
publicly agreed to give a complete loan waiver to the peasantry. But within a
fortnight, although it announced a deceptive loan waiver package of Rs 34,000
crore and a waiver of up to Rs 1.5 lakh per farmer, it betrayed its promise of
a complete loan waiver and imposed several onerous conditions that would leave
a great majority of farmers out of the loan waiver orbit.
Massive joint agitations were held against this
betrayal, including a united campaign tour of 15 large district conventions in
July that mobilised over 40,000 farmers despite the monsoons and a state-wide Chakka Jaam (Road Blockade) on August 14
in which over two lakh farmers blocked national and state highways at over 200
centres in 31 districts of the state. The AIKS participation in this joint Road
Blockade action was the largest - over 85,000.
By a conscious decision, all the above independent and
united struggles by the AIKS were peaceful and disciplined. Throughout the
campaign for all these struggles, apart from concentrating fire on the BJP-Shiv
Sena state government, the BJP-led central government of Narendra Modi was also
severely castigated for its anti-peasant, anti-people, pro-crony corporate and
neo-liberal policies and its dangerous communal and casteist conspiracies.
When the state government refused to relent on both
the crucial aspects of loan waiver and land rights, the AIKS again decided to
take up cudgels against the betrayal of the BJP state government, and took the
decision of the Long March and the Assembly Gherao.
Shocking Reality
Two shocking objective facts explain the massive
peasant response to all these struggles.
One, the question of farmers’ suicides. Since the advent of neoliberal policies in
agriculture begun by the Congress government in 1991 and carried forward with
great speed by successive Congress and BJP governments – the Modi government
being the worst culprit – 400,000 debt-ridden farmers in India have been forced
to commit suicide in the past twenty-five years. These figures come from the
National Crime Records Bureau of the Union Home Ministry. Maharashtra has the notorious
distinction of being the largest ‘graveyard of farmers’, accounting for nearly
75,000 peasant suicides in the same period.
Two, the question of starvation of Adivasi children. Thousands of Adivasi children in
the state, and also all over the country, die every year due to malnutrition
and starvation – a result of multiple factors such as landlessness and
unemployment as well as the breakdown of the public distribution system and the
health care system.
These two searing facts are enough to throw a blinding
light on the deepening agrarian crisis and agrarian distress in the state and
the country.
Preparations for the Long March
In Sangli, at the AIKS State Council meeting on
February 16, a decision was taken to hold the Long March. The AIKS collective
state leadership began to make meticulous preparations for this enormous
endeavour. We had barely three weeks before the March was to take place. The
AIKS wanted to begin the March on March 6, a few days after Holi (March 1 and
March 2). The State Assembly would be in session.
The most important task was mobilisation of peasants
for the March. Hundreds of meetings were held in the villages, thousands of
leaflets were distributed, and registration drives were conducted. A press
conference was held in Mumbai on February 21 and at Nashik on March 2 to publicise
the Long March.
The question has often been asked - how were the
logistics of the Long March dealt with? Rice, dal, chillies, oil and firewood
for the food of the participants was collected by peasants from the villages
themselves and was stored in several tempos. The tempos used to go ahead of the
marchers and volunteers would cook and keep the food ready for the marchers
when they reached the designated spots every day for lunch and dinner. Hired water
tankers for drinking were stationed at various points along the way. An
ambulance with a doctors’ team of Kisan Sabha sympathisers and the necessary
medicines collected by the CITU-affiliated Medical Representatives Union were
kept along with the Long March. AIKS state and Nashik district office bearers
made three reconnaissance trips from Nashik to Mumbai and back to decide on the
appropriate places to have lunch, dinner and to rest in the night. This was in
itself a difficult task.
The marchers walked an average of 30 to 35 Km per day
in the scorching sun and on the second last day, the distance that had to be
covered stretched to 43 Km! It goes without saying that all AIKS leaders walked
with the peasants throughout.
There were thousands of women in the march. Their grit
and determination was amazing – and also humbling. Many of them walked
barefoot, with bruised and bleeding feet. These women were specially lauded and
saluted.
The way that tens of thousands of poor and landless
peasants marched relentlessly with determination 30 to 35 Km per day for seven
days in scorching heat, hundreds of them barefoot, bruised and bleeding on tar
roads, stirred the conscience of the nation. It evoked not only massive public
support for their cause, but also massive public anger against the callous and
insensitive BJP-led state government. It made people aware of the economic
injustice and social inequality prevailing in the country. This sight must have
made many people want to fight against injustice and inequality.
During and after the strenuous march every night, hundreds
of men and women still had the energy to sing and dance to the tune of their
quaint musical instruments. Culture was an inseparable part of their lives. That
they did this night after night despite all the physical exertion was indeed
admirable and it enthused all others too.
Overwhelming Response from the People and the Media
The people responded with great love and appreciation
for the Long March. People from the working-class and the middle-class –
Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, Dalits – welcomed the March with open arms in several
localities. Groups of hundreds of people, including youth and women in large
numbers, congregated at various spots en route to felicitate the marchers. They
donated generously – both in cash and in kind. Ordinary people came forward to
give us water, sharbat, biscuits,
food and even footwear. In my 40 years of life in the Left movement, I must
admit that I have never come across such a spontaneous outpouring of support
and solidarity.
Many of the ordinary people who met us in Mumbai city,
including several media persons and even some in the police explained to us the
reason for their solidarity. This is the sum and substance of what they said –
we are also the children of farmers; our roots lie in the villages; we know the
plight of farmers; and that is why we have come out in your support.
The biggest and most spontaneous reception to the Long
March was in the Dalit locality of Mata Ramabai Ambedkar Nagar at Ghatkopar in
Mumbai, the very place that had seen the shooting down of 11 Dalits in police
firing under the BJP-Shiv Sena regime 20 years ago. The Dabbawalas of Mumbai
also contributed their mite to the cause. In the most touching move, farmers
from Raigad district under the leadership of the Peasants and Workers Party
(PWP) brought 1.5 lakh rice bhakris and dry fish for the marchers on the
last day at Azad Maidan. The CITU, AIDWA, DYFI and SFI in Mumbai and Thane-Palghar
districts launched a campaign amongst the people in support of this Long March,
but the mass response went far beyond that. This response of the people further
steeled the marchers in their resolve.
The CPI(M) Maharashtra State Committee had, of course,
given full support to this Long March right from the beginning. Another Left
party, the Peasants and Workers Party (PWP) had also supported it throughout.
CPI leaders were present at Nashik to greet the march when it began. All other political
parties except the BJP – viz. Congress, Nationalist Congress Party (NCP),
Samajwadi, Republican, Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS)
and also the Shiv Sena, which is a partner in the state government, openly
supported the Kisan Sabha Long March and their top leaders either joined the
march for a time or pledged their support when it had stopped for the night at
Sion or when it culminated at Azad Maidan. The massive response of the people
and the media was the key reason for this unprecedented support of many
unlikely forces right across the political spectrum.
The print, electronic and social media all over the
country played a magnificent role. That highlighted not only the Kisan Long
March but also the deep agrarian crisis and burning peasant issues with
relevance for the whole country. It began with a video taken by Dr Ajit Nawale
of tens of thousands of farmers marching down the hill of the Kasara Ghat near
Igatpuri on the morning of day three, with the picturesque view of hills on one
side and valleys on the other. The red banners, red flags, red caps and the
sheer numbers really woke up the media. The video went viral in the social
media and after that we started getting a lot of coverage in the mainstream
print and electronic media right up to the culmination of the Long March.
Sensitive and humanitarian decision
The Kisan Sabha leadership took the sensitive and humanitarian
decision of walking day and night on the last day, from 11 am on March 11 when
the march started from Thane city to 6 am on March 12 when it reached Azad Maidan
in the heart of south Mumbai. This decision was taken to avoid the inevitable
traffic snarls on March 12 that would surely have disrupted the final board
examinations of tens of thousands of SSC students in Mumbai and would have led
to the loss of a precious year in their lives. Tens of thousands of peasants
took this decision democratically, at the suggestion placed by J P Gavit, by a
massive and unanimous show of hands on the night of March 11 when they reached
the Somaiya Maidan at Sion in Mumbai city. Their noble sentiments were
expressed in these memorable words, ‘It does not matter if we have to suffer
some more, but we will not let our children in Mumbai suffer.’ They had their
dinner, rested for an hour or two, and restarted their march to Mumbai after
midnight, reaching their destination at dawn. This gesture drew the unstinted
admiration of people not only in Mumbai, but all across the country. Several
prominent celebrities in India also expressed their appreciation at this
gesture.
Government Concedes
All this put tremendous pressure on the BJP-led state
government. Actually, the state government had not bothered to make any contact
with the marchers till March 11, the penultimate day of the march, when their
state Irrigation Minister Girish Mahajan met the leaders during the march
itself and the memorandum of demands was handed over to him. Initially, before
the march began, they had almost certainly underestimated its likely size.
Later, the massive response to the Long March of the peasantry, the people and
the media, which they had least expected, shocked them into taking action.
On March 12, Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis, Ministers
Chandrakant Patil, Girish Mahajan, Eknath Shinde, Pandurang Fundkar, Subhash
Deshmukh and Vishnu Savra, along with a battery of top officials of various
departments, held a three-hour discussion with Kisan Sabha leaders in the
Vidhan Bhavan. Also present were leaders of the opposition Radhakrishna Vikhe
Patil (Congress), Dhananjay Munde, Ajit Pawar and Sunil Tatkare (NCP).
General secretary of the Peasants and Workers Party
(PWP) Jayant Patil, MLC, who had helped the Kisan Sabha struggle all along, and
state president of the Janata Dal (Sharad Yadav group), Kapil Patil, MLC, were
also present during the discussions.
The Kisan Sabha delegation included Dr Ashok Dhawale,
J P Gavit, MLA, CITU former state president Narasayya Adam, ex-MLA, Kisan
Gujar, Dr Ajit Nawale, Subhash Choudhari, Savliram Pawar, Sunil Malusare, Irfan Shaikh,
Ratan Budhar, Barkya Mangat, Radka Kalangda, Umesh Deshmukh, Sidhappa
Kalshetty, Vilas Babar and DYFI state vice president Indrajeet Gavit. These
were AIKS state office bearers who actually walked in the Long March, along
with AIAWU state leader Manohar Muley and CITU state leader Vinod Nikole.
In the light of the earlier bitter experiences with
the present government, the Kisan Sabha had taken the clear position right in
the beginning that it would not withdraw this struggle without official written
assurances. These written assurances on all the demands were given within an
hour of the conclusion of the talks, with the signature of the chief secretary
of the state government. Three Ministers of the state government – Chandrakant
Patil and Girish Mahajan of the BJP and Eknath Shinde of the Shiv Sena – came on their own to the victory rally at Azad
Maidan and pledged to implement the agreement that had been reached. The Kisan
Sabha also insisted that the agreement arrived at should be placed on the table
of the House by the chief minister in the state assembly that was then in
session. Accordingly, the chief minister tabled that agreement in the House on
March 13.
Concrete time-bound written assurances have been given
by the government on AIKS demands concerning the implementation of the Forest
Rights Act (FRA), river linking proposal adversely affecting tribals in Nashik,
Palghar and Thane districts, loan waiver to farmers, mechanism for remunerative
prices, vesting of temple lands, regularising houses on pasture lands, no land
acquisition without consent, increase in old-age pensions, improving the public
distribution system and compensation to lakhs of farmers in the Vidarbha and
Marathwada regions who have suffered huge losses of the cotton crop due to pink
bollworm pest attacks, hailstorms and other issues. The agreement reached on
March 12 between the Government of Maharashtra and the Maharashtra Rajya Kisan
Sabha has been published
in the CPI (M) central Party papers People’s Democracy and Loklahar.
Resounding Victory Rally
The resounding AIKS victory rally of over 50,000
farmers at Azad Maidan in Mumbai on the evening of March 12 was addressed by
CPI(M) general secretary Sitaram Yechury, ex-MP, CPI(M) state secretary
Narasayya Adam, ex-MLA, PWP general secretary Jayant Patil, MLC, Janata Dal
(Sharad Yadav group) state president Kapil Patil, MLC, former AIKS president
Amra Ram, ex-MLA, AIKS joint secretaries K K Ragesh, MP, and Vijoo Krishnan
(who had taken part in the first two days of the march), renowned journalist P
Sainath, CPI(M) central committee member Mahendra Singh, AIDWA general
secretary Mariam Dhawale and vice president Sudha Sundararaman, CITU vice
president Dr D L Karad, and by leaders of this Long March - AIKS national
president Dr Ashok Dhawale, former state president J P Gavit, MLA, state
president Kisan Gujar and state general secretary Dr Ajit Nawale – and, earlier
in the day by other leaders of the AIKS, CITU, AIAWU, AIDWA, DYFI, SFI and by a
wide spectrum of the supporting political parties, organisations and
individuals.
All the farmers left Mumbai on the night of March 12,
with tremendous confidence generated by this victory, buttressed with deep
gratitude towards the people of the city, the state and the country who had
supported them to the hilt in this struggle. The massive nationwide public
response to this Long March was a tribute to the valiant, peaceful, democratic and
unprecedented struggle waged by tens of thousands of peasants under the
collective leadership of the Maharashtra Rajya Kisan Sabha.
A Battle Won, The War Remains
This massive response was also a reflection of the
fact that the demands of land rights, loan waiver, remunerative prices and
pension, which were essentially directed against the neo-liberal policies of
the BJP-led governments in the state and at the centre, were in fact the
demands of the peasantry of India as a whole. The Long March was an integral
part of a movement of farmers that is breaking out all over the country. We
have seen the huge and consistent Kisan Sabha-led farmers’ struggles in
Rajasthan and elsewhere in the country. We have seen the major united actions
led by broad platforms like the Bhoomi Adhikar Andolan (BAA) and the Kisan
Sansad and Mahila Kisan Sansad organised in Delhi last November by the All
India Kisan Sangharsh Coordination Committee (AIKSCC).
Now the AIKS Central Kisan Committee has decided to
broaden and intensify this struggle all over the country. We have decided on an
unprecedented campaign of collecting 10 crore signatures of farmers and all
citizens across India to demand a loan waiver, remunerative prices, land
rights, pension and comprehensive crop insurance. On 9th August,
2018, the 76th anniversary of the Quit India Movement, lakhs of
farmers in the country will submit these signatures to every District Collector
and will then conduct a peaceful and democratic countrywide Jail Bharo (Fill up
Jails) agitation on these demands. The slogan will be: Just as Mahatma Gandhi
told the rapacious British imperialists to Quit India, so also the farmers of
the country will tell the anti-farmer, pro-corporate, communal, casteist and
divisive Modi-led BJP government to Quit India!
Another crucial gain of this Long March was that the
peasantry struggled together as a class, rising above the divisions of
religion, caste and creed. The massive peoples’ solidarity with it also cut
across all these barriers. It showed that, in the last analysis, class struggle
and class solidarity is the only way to fight back the dark forces of
communalism and casteism.
One battle has been won, but the war still remains.
And after the victory in this battle, this war shall be fought with even
greater grit and determination all over the country!
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