Cover Feature

May 10

Rural Poor March to Parliament against UPA Government’s One Year Of Betrayal

Even as the UPA government was busy preparing for the celebrations of its first year in power, thousands of the poorest of the poor of our villages, living on the brink of acute malnutrition and starvation, thronged Parliament Street to remind the Congress-led UPA Government of its slogan 'Aam Aadmi Ke Saath' (With the common man), issued one year back, and the subsequent one year of betrayal of the same ‘Aam Aadmi'. The last one year of UPA rule was witness to an intensified agrarian crisis, reflected in increased number of farmers’ suicides and starvation deaths, thanks to the anti-peasant, anti-labour agrarian policies of the UPA government, which are in fact a continuation of the previous NDA regime’s agricultural policy. Despite their tall promises in the CMP, they have prepared an Employment Guarantee Bill in its most diluted form, offering jobs only to one person per family and that too only for those below the poverty line. Worse still, they have not so far tabled the Bill. Nor has the UPA Government done anything to reverse the anti-tribal policies of the NDA regime. In the southern states the relief and rehabilitation for the Tsunami-affected people is grossly inadequate.

Voicing the mounting unrest among the rural poor all over the country, All-India Agricultural Labour Association (AIALA) and All-India Kisan Sangharsh Samiti (AIKSS) organized an impressive march to the Parliament on May 10, the date marking the commencement of the First War of Independence in 1857 - a tribute to the martyrs of the great peasant rebellion against British Imperialism. The march, led by Comrades Swadesh Bhattacharya, PB member of CPI(ML) and National Vice-President of AIALA, started from Ramlila Maidan and culminated at the Parliament Street . There Comrade Dipankar Bhattacharya, GS of CPI(ML), addressed the rally. He pointed out that while farmers commit suicide burdened by debt, the government is not willing to waive a single rupee of farmers’ debt. However, the UPA Government recently waived Rs. 850 crore worth of taxes for the cigarette MNC ITC. The UPA Government had promised to give tsunami victims loans in order to help them rebuild their lives. But now when devastated fishermen ask for loans, banks ask them for a guarantee! At the same time, the richest corporates have robbed the national exchequer of one lakh crore rupees. He concluded that as UPA celebrates its first anniversary, they need to be warned them that as long as people continue to be unemployed and die of hunger and farmers commit suicide, this government too will be thrown out of power as previous ones have been.

Other prominent speakers were Comrades Rameshwar Prasad, GS of AIALA, Rajaram Singh, National Convener AIKSS and Swapan Mukherjee, GS of AICCTU. Leaders from various states also spoke. Com. Krishna Adhikari, National Vice-President of AIALA, presided over the meeting and Comrade Janardan Prasad, moved the resolutions.

Later, a team of office-bearers of the two organizations submitted memoranda addressed to the Prime Minister, Home Minister and the Ministers for Rural Development and Water Resources.

The Seed Bill as Small Farmers See It

[We carry excerpts from Deeptiman Tiwari’s article in Tehelka (28.5.05), in which he interviewed farmers participating in the CPI(ML)’s Parliament March on May 10.]

Devender Thakur, a marginal farmer from village Rabua in Samastipur, Bihar : “All the seeds that I sow are saved from the last year’s produce. Many a times I also exchange. Like if I don’t have enough paddy seeds for the season, I exchange some other seed like mustard or maize with someone in the village. But I hear the new bill is going to stop this traditional practice. If such a thing happens, a poor farmer like me will have extreme difficulties in farming. I know I’ll never have enough money to buy branded seeds.”

Upendra Rai, small farmer from Samastipur: “The research institutes take our seeds and develop new varieties, and then sell them back to us. What do we get for our contribution? Nothing. There is this farmer in our village who had developed his own variety of maize. It was good. Two years later the block development office banned us from using the seed, no reasons were given. Now, there is this bill that aims to force us to eventually buy seeds from the market. The rich farmers have money to buy high yielding seeds from the market. What about us, for whom survival is an everyday struggle?”

Gora Singh, a relatively well-to-do farmer from Mansa, Punjab : “I do my entire wheat farming with my own seeds. I have used ‘company seeds’ and seen the results. I have used Monsanto’s maize. It failed. I didn’t even get compensation.”

Mukti Narayan Singh from Begusarai: “I used hybrid varieties on a small piece of land. High yields I did get, but with its pollination my own seeds, which were higher in quality, in the adjacent land, were rendered infertile. I’ve lost my own variety and have to borrow from others. And if the market is monopolised, as it looks like, middlemen will take over and there will be huge corruption.”

Santosh Kumar, a graduate Samastipur who took to farming because he was jobless: “Just about two years ago, Monsanto’s Cargill 900M seeds were sown in thousands of acres across Bihar . But nothing came out of it. We couldn’t reap even one single grain. We’ve got no compensation.”