Ashok Dhawale
June 5, 2017 was a red letter day in the history of
Maharashtra. On that day, practically the whole of rural and semi-urban
Maharashtra came to a halt as part of a Maharashtra Bandh to support the
historic statewide farmers’ strike that began on June 1. The call had been
given jointly by several peasant organisations, among whom the AIKS is playing
a major role.
Hundreds of towns, mandis, roads, shops and government
offices were closed down by lakhs of farmers who came on to the streets in
solidarity with the demands of the strike. In several places, effigies of the
BJP state government were burnt. There were police lathi charges in several
places in which innumerable peasants were injured. One of them died while
running to escape from the police repression. There were hundreds of arrests.
The strike and the Bandh reflected the long pent-up anger of
the peasantry at always being given a raw deal by the powers that be. The rage
against the government was palpable everywhere. Maharashtra had never seen such
a novel phenomenon of peasant protest. The strike has entered its successful
seventh day at the time of filing this report on June 7.
FUNDAMENTAL DEMANDS
The unprecedented peasant strike, with farmers refusing to
get their produce like milk, vegetables and fruits to the market, has been
intensifying with every passing day. The two cardinal demands of the strike are
peasant loan waiver and implementation of the recommendations of the National
Commission on Farmers (NCF) that was headed by Dr M S Swaminathan, particularly
the one about setting the Minimum Support Price (MSP) for all crops to cover
the cost of production plus fifty percent profit.
Other demands include increase in the price of milk paid to
the farmer; pension to peasants and agricultural workers above the age of 60
years; waiving of arrears of electricity bills; and increased irrigation
facilities. Some other demands that have been raised are to stop the conspiracy
of snatching farmers’ lands in the name of the Mumbai-Nagpur Samruddhi Highway
and the Delhi-Mumbai Industrial Corridor; scrapping of the pro-corporate
Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana and providing comprehensive insurance security
to all farmers.
The spontaneous response of the peasantry of Maharashtra to
the strike was not without reason. Of the four lakh suicides of debt-ridden
peasants that have taken place in India during the last 25 years of neo-liberal
policies, Maharashtra has the dubious distinction of topping the list of
states, with nearly 75,000 farmers having committed suicide. Vidarbha region
has the largest number of peasant suicides, followed by the Marathwada region.
12,602 farmers committed suicide in India in the year 2015. Compared to 2014,
this is a massive 42 percent increase. Maharashtra had 4,291 farmer suicides in
2015. The situation has aggravated markedly with the ascent of the BJP-led Modi
regime three years ago.
OVERCOMING BETRAYAL
The peasant strike boiled over with anger on June 3 with the
shameful act of its betrayal by two blacklegs who were masquerading as peasant
leaders. It has now come to light that both these self-styled leaders – Jayaji
Suryavanshi and Sandip Gidde – have old RSS connections. They met the Maharashtra
chief minister Devendra Fadnavis in a delegation in the wee hours of June 3. In
spite of the CM not concretely conceding even a single demand of the fighting
peasants after a three hour discussion, they unilaterally declared a withdrawal
of the strike at dawn without consulting any of the peasant organisations who
were actively supporting the strike. It became crystal clear that both the
RSS-BJP state government and these blacklegs had connived to undermine this
historic peasant struggle.
But to their utter misfortune, the general secretary of the
Maharashtra Rajya Kisan Sabha (AIKS), Dr Ajit Nawale was also a part of the
delegation that met the CM. He was the only one of the 17-member delegation who
hotly argued that none of the vital demands of the strike like loan waiver and
remunerative prices were agreed to by the CM and hence the strike must on no
account be withdrawn. The CM, during the discussions, went to the extent of
branding him as a ‘disruptive Communist’ and the two blacklegs declared that
‘he was not a member of the core committee, and hence need not be taken
seriously.’
Dr Ajit Nawale then consulted AIKS national joint secretary
Dr Ashok Dhawale on phone at 3.45 am on June 3. Both decided that he should
walk out of the talks with the CM in protest and should immediately report the
full details of the connived betrayal to the media that was waiting outside the
CM’s bungalow. This was flashed all over the state by the electronic media and
it led to a massive uproar amongst the peasantry all over the state against
both the chief minister and these blacklegs. Both these AIKS leaders
immediately contacted leaders of the other peasant organisations who were
against this sellout and it was jointly decided by all of them to give the
Maharashtra Bandh call for June 5.
On June 2, before all these events, CPI(M) general secretary
Sitaram Yechury had addressed a jam-packed press meet in Mumbai where he fully
supported the peasant strike. On June 3 again, Dr Ashok Dhawale, Dr Ajit
Nawale, AIKS state president Kisan Gujar and state working president Arjun Adey
addressed another jam-packed press meet in Mumbai organised by the AIKS. They
thoroughly exposed this betrayal and called for intensification of the strike.
Both these press meets were extensively covered by the print and electronic
media.
On June 4, a meeting of peasant organisations was held at
Nashik, where the old core committee that held discussions with the CM was
declared as dissolved and a new 21-member coordination committee comprising leaders
of various peasant organisations was formed to lead the strike. As per the call
of this committee, on June 6, the day after the Maharashtra Bandh, tens of
thousands of peasants closed down the tehsil offices in the state, putting
padlocks on many of them. On June 7, the peasants will picket the houses of
MLAs and MPs throughout Maharashtra. On June 8, a meeting followed by a peasant
convention will be held in Nashik to decide the future course of this struggle.
The ongoing peasant struggle has already taken a toll of the
unity of the ruling alliance in the state. Two major political parties, the
Shiv Sena and the Swabhimani Party led by peasant leader Raju Shetty, a Lok
Sabha MP, are openly supporting the peasant strike and are vehemently
criticising the BJP and the chief minister. Sadabhau Khot of the Swabhimani
Party, who is the minister of state for agriculture in the state government,
was also involved in the talks in the CM’s house on June 3. He is also being
roundly criticised and deep differences have developed between him and his
leader Raju Shetty. Due to the inexorable sweep of the peasant strike, the
Congress, NCP and others have declared support to it.
ROLE OF THE LEFT
All Left parties – CPI(M), CPI, PWP – have been actively
supporting the peasant strike from the beginning. Trade unions like CITU and
AITUC, organisations like AIAWU, AIDWA, DYFI and SFI have also extended active
support. The CITU has held demonstrations and marches in several places to
support the peasant strike as part of its call for worker-peasant unity. AIKS
units throughout Maharashtra are, of course, in the thick of the struggle.
The consistent AIKS struggles in Maharashtra over the last
one and a half years have, in fact, helped to popularise the issues and the
demands of the present struggle. The massive one lakh strong AIKS sit-in
satyagraha at Nashik in March 2016; the militant struggle on the issue of
drought at the Aurangabad Divisional Commissioner’s office in the Marathwada
region in May 2016; the impressive Coffin Rally to the Thane District Collector’s
office to mark the AIKS state conference in June 2016; and the 50,000 strong
siege of the tribal development minister’s house at Wada in Palghar district in
October 2016, which yielded concrete gains for the Adivasi peasantry; and the
‘Aasood’ (Whipcord) State Convention followed by the ‘Aasood’ State Rally to
the house of the state agriculture minister at Khamgaon in Buldana district of
Vidarbha region last month on May 11, 2017 – it is this series of struggles led
by the AIKS that have put the organisation for the first time in the mainstream
of the current peasant struggle in Maharashtra.
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