All India Kisan Sabha, Maharashtra: Interview: Land Acquisition Imperatives

Saturday, June 4, 2011

Interview: Land Acquisition Imperatives

We are happy to refer the readers to a brief video interview with Dr Smita Gupta, senior economist with the Institute of Human Development, New Delhi and someone who is actively involved with the activities of farmers' organisations. She comments here on the issues related to land acquisition in India.

This is a Newsclick production. We have borrowed it from http://newsclick.in/india/active-role-state-well-defined-public-purpose-consent-imperatives-land-acquisition.

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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.