All India Kisan Sabha, Maharashtra: January 2019

Thursday, January 3, 2019

GRAMEEN BHARAT BANDH ON DEMANDS OF THE PEASANTRY, 8-9 JAN. 2019. IN SOLIDARITY WITH UNITED TRADE UNION GENERAL STRIKE

GRAMEEN BHARAT BANDH ON DEMANDS OF THE PEASANTRY, 8-9 JANUARY 2019

IN SOLIDARITY WITH UNITED TRADE UNION GENERAL STRIKE

AGAINST ANTI-PEASANT, ANTI-WORKER BJP GOVT

The All India Kisan Council held in Delhi on 17th and 18th December, 2018 gave a call for a rural hartal on 8th and 9th January, 2019 in solidarity with the call of United Trade Unions for a General Strike on the two days. The AIKS along with the All India Agricultural Workers’ Union and like-minded organisations will actively campaign on demands of the peasantry and rural poor, hold protest demonstrations, Rail Roko, Road Roko and bring rural India to a standstill against the anti-peasant, anti-worker BJP Government.

The last four and a half years of the Narendra Modi led BJP Government has witnessed an aggressive pursuit of neo-liberal economic policies and mounting burdens on the peasantry as well as the toiling masses. Attacks on the hard won rights of the workers has been accompanied by increasing casualisation, cuts in social security measures as well as ever increasing burden of price rise, increase in health and education expenses. Agrarian crisis has also intensified leading to increased farm suicides, indebtedness and migration. All promises made by the Prime Minister and BJP Government to the peasantry have been betrayed. The peasantry are being dispossessed and forced to sell their labour in the unorganised sector under precarious conditions. This situation calls for greater coordinated actions between the working class and the peasantry.

The working and the peasantry have had coordinated united actions in an unprecedented show of solidarity on the occasion of 9th August Jail Bharo and 5th September MazdoorKisanSangharsh Rally. The CITU took active part in the KisanMukti March on 29th and 30th November, 2018. Taking this solidarity forward AIKS has given the call for the rural hartal, Road and Rail Roko programmes highlighting the burning problems of the peasantry, synchronising it with the Strike Call of the Workers. The Bhumi Adhikar Andolan has also extended support to the Strike and will take active part. AIKS calls upon all units to work for the success of this historic Strike call in coordination with like-minded organisations.

Ashok Dhawale, President

Hannan Mollah, General Secretary

3rd January 2019

About Us

All India Kisan Sabha (अखिल भारतीय किसान सभा; AIKS), is the largest national organisation representing peasants in India, with a membership of 2,25,81,308 (22.58 million). The AIKS, which was formed at its first conference on April 11, 1936 at Lucknow, has a glorious 75-year history. It played a stellar role in arousing the peasantry against British imperialism in the movement for national freedom. It was able to unite various sections of the peasantry in the struggle against feudalism, big traders and monopolists. The AIKS led historic peasant struggles in Telangana in Andhra Pradesh, Tebhaga in West Bengal, Punnapra-Vayalar and North Malabar in Kerala, Surma Valley in Assam and tribal movements in Tripura and Maharashtra.

In the period after independence, it has continued to organise peasants against the anti-peasant policies of the government. These policies have acquired a particularly disastrous nature during the last two decades of neo-liberalism, leading to suicides of over 2.5 lakh debt-ridden peasants in the last 15 years. The strong peasant movement built by the AIKS has contributed to the formation of the Left-led state governments in West Bengal, Kerala and Tripura.

The AIKS believes that a powerful agrarian movement has to be built on alternative policies centred on the interests of the poor peasants and agricultural workers, both of whom constitute the overwhelming majority of the Indian peasantry. The AIKS is clear that only a thoroughgoing agrarian revolution can truly solve the deep and growing crisis in Indian agriculture.

Some of the towering peasant leaders of the AIKS have been Swami Sahajanand Saraswati, Muzaffar Ahmad, P Sundarayya, A K Gopalan, E M S Namboodiripad, M Basavapunnaiah, Hare Hrishna Konar, Benoy Krishna Choudhary, Dasharath Deb, M A Rasul, Harkishan Singh Surjeet, Godavari Parulekar and Krantisimha Nana Patil.

This blog is managed by the Maharashtra State Committee of the AIKS. The Maharashtra State Committee functions out of Janashakti, P.B.Marg, Worli, Mumbai-400013; Phone: +91-22-24951576.