Maharashtra: AIKS holds convention of temple land peasants in Kolhapur

Santram Patil

On March 23, 2011, the martyrdom anniversary of Shaheed Bhagat Singh, Rajguru and Sukhdev, the AIKS held a convention at Kolhapur of over 600 temple land peasants from six districts of Western Maharashtra and Konkan. These districts included Kolhapur, Sangli, Satara, Solapur, Sindhudurg and Ratnagiri. The chief guests at the convention were AIKS joint secretary N K Shukla and AIKS CKC member Dr Ashok Dhawale. The guests first garlanded the portrait of Bhagat Singh.

(A view of the convention)

There are 17,168 temple trusts in Maharashtra that own 5.58 lakh acres of land. These are the registered temple trusts. Thousands of unregistered temple trusts also own huge amounts of land. Lakhs of peasants have been actually cultivating this land for generations, but it is not vested in their names. Hence they cannot get any crop loans, they cannot take advantage of irrigation schemes, they cannot get any relief in case of natural calamities. The main demand of this convention was that all these temple lands must be vested in the names of the cultivating peasants.

The AIKS first took up this issue in Kolhapur district a couple of years ago and the movement then spread to the other districts of Western Maharashtra and Konkan named above. Several agitational actions have been organised by the AIKS around the burning issues of temple land peasants, especially in Kolhapur, Sangli and Satara districts of Western Maharashtra. It may be remembered that Western Maharashtra is the citadel of the powerful sugar lobby in Maharashtra.

The convention was inaugurated by Chandrakant Yadav, the working president of the AIKS-affiliated Temple Land Peasants Organisation. He gave the historical background of the problem, outlined the main issues involved and explained the outcome of the talks held with the state government.

AIKS CKC member Dr Ashok Dhawale spoke of the significance of the martyrdom of Bhagat Singh, Rajguru and Sukhdev at the hands of the British imperialists and explained the twin objectives of freedom and socialism for which Bhagat Singh and his comrades laid down their lives. He castigated the state government which for 63 years after independence had not thought it fit to change the 1863 Act of British colonial rule vintage that still governed temple lands. In contrast, he placed the record of land reforms of the Left-led state governments of West Bengal, Kerala and Tripura, whereby lakhs of agricultural workers and poor peasants had got lands for the first time.

In Maharashtra, he gave the examples of the successful five-year struggle of the peasantry of Raigad district that resulted in the denotification of the huge 10,000 hectare Mahamumbai SEZ that was being sought to be developed by Mukesh Ambani, and the recent huge AIKS Jail Bharo stir of one lakh peasants in the state for the stringent implementation of the Forest Rights Act. He called for launching a similar statewide stir on the temple lands issue.

AIKS joint secretary N K Shukla, after congratulating the peasants for taking up this just issue, briefly outlined the glorious 75-year history of the AIKS that was formed on April 11, 1936 and which brought the question of ‘Land to the Tiller’ to the centre stage of the peasant movement. He explained the travesty of land reforms carried out by bourgeois state governments after independence and said that even now in states like Bihar the AIKS is leading struggles of the rural poor against the landlord lobby on the land question.

He then spoke of the disastrous impact of the neo-liberal policies pursued by the Congress and BJP-led central governments during the last two decades on agriculture and the peasantry. It was these policies that had led to the unprecedented phenomenon of thousands of peasant suicides due to indebtedness in large parts of the country and also to land alienation on a large scale. Multinationals and corporates are invading the agricultural sector in search of profits and this is leading to massive rise in the cost of inputs like seeds, fertilisers and pesticides. But the peasants do not get remunerative prices for their produce, and it is this that leads to indebtedness. The corporates are also cornering large chunks of agricultural land for corporate and contract farming. He called upon the gathering to strengthen the AIKS and wished the temple lands struggle all success.

AIKS state council member and president of the AIKS-affiliated Temple Land Peasants Organisation, Santram Patil in his presidential speech, gave a call for intensifying the struggle in the coming days. As the first step, he declared, the AIKS will lead a demonstration on the Pune Divisional Commissioner office on April 7 on the temple land issue. Other AIKS leaders from the participating districts who addressed the convention were Umesh Deshmukh, Manik Avaghade, Anna Shinde, S M Patil and Ananda Vengurlekar.

On April 7, 2011, hundreds of temple land peasants from these districts marched on the Divisional Commissioner office in Pune and submitted a memorandum of demands. The Commissioner held talks with the AIKS delegation and gave some positive assurances. The Pune demonstration was led by AIKS state general secretary Kisan Gujar, Chandrakant Yadav, Santram Patil, Umesh Deshmukh, Manik Avaghade and others.

The AIKS Maharashtra state council has decided to organise temple land peasants all over the state in the coming days so that this just struggle for land gains even more strength.

An article on agrarian issues in India, including Maharashtra

We take this opportunity to introduce to you all a very important paper on agrarian issues in India in the era of globalisation.

 

This paper describes and analyzes the impact of policies of globalization and liberalization on the agrarian economy of India. In particular, it discusses the reversal of land reform, changes in the policies of administered agricultural input costs and output prices, cutbacks in public investment in rural physical and social infrastructure, the dismantling of the institutional structure of social and development banking, the withdrawal of quantitative restrictions on the import of agricultural products, cutbacks in the public distribution system, and the undermining of national systems of research and extension and protection of national plant and other biological wealth. The data used in the paper come from the major sources of national-level official statistics and primary data collected as part of a Project on Agrarian Relations in India. 

Maharashtra was the fourth State to be studied as part of the Project on Agrarian Relations in India (PARI). Census-type surveys were conducted in May-June 2007 in two villages. This paper uses data collected from the two villages in Maharashtra, among others: Warwat Khanderao in Buldhana and Nimshirgaon in Kolhapur. Warwat Khanderao is in Sangrampur tehsil, Buldhana district, in the Vidarbha region of Maharashtra. Nimshirgaon is a village in Shirol taluk of Kolhapur district in the sugarcane-growing region of western Maharashtra. For more details on the villages, see http://agrarianstudies.org/pages.asp?menuid=29

The paper comes to the conclusion that "Our survey data from Andhra Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra indicate the near-impossibility, in the present circumstances, of peasant households with two hectares of operational holdings or less earning an income sufficient for family survival." 

Read the paper by clicking here: DOWNLOAD

AIKS in 2010: A Year of Peasant Agitations in Maharashtra

We present below a short report on the agitations undertaken by AIKS in Maharashtra in the year 2010, since the All India Conference of the AIKS held in Guntur in January 2010.

LOSS OF COMRADE KRISHNA KHOPKAR

On September 15, 2010, we lost one of our stalwarts – Comrade Krishna Khopkar, who was the seniormost state vice president of the AIKS and a former CKC member. His ideological contribution to the growth of the AIKS in Maharashtra was immense. Even at the age of 86, he was alert, active and sprightly till the end. The void created by his loss will be impossible to fill. The AIKS Maharashtra state council has decided to set up the Comrade Krishna Khopkar Research Centre in his memory.

AGITATIONS AND STRUGGLES

Since the Guntur All India conference in January 2010, the AIKS in Maharashtra has been active in struggles around the following main issues: 

1. Against price rise and for food security, including revamping and universalisation of the public distribution system and for BPL ration cards; 

2. For implementation of the Forest Rights Act; 

3. For compensation to the peasantry due to excess and unseasonal rainfall; 

4. For remunerative prices of cotton, sugarcane, paddy and other crops; 

5. On the vesting of temple lands in the name of the tilling peasantry; 

6. Against black marketeering of fertilisers and seeds; 

7. On local issues of irrigation and power; 

8. Opposition to the Maharashtra SEZ Bill tabled by the state government in the assembly.

Statewide Mass Mobilisation in November and Statewide Rally on Assembly in December

On all the above issues, two big actions in Maharashtra recently took place under AIKS leadership. From November 15 to 22, 2010, over 40,000 peasants were mobilised in several district and tehsil centres in Nashik, Thane, Ahmednagar, Nanded, Pune, Yavatmal, Wardha, Buldana, Parbhani, Hingoli, Solapur, Kolhapur, Raigad and other districts in militant actions that succeeded in winning many local demands. The AIKS mobilised 15,000 peasants in Nashik district, 12,000 in Thane district and 13,000 in all the other districts in these actions.

On December 15, 2010, the AIKS Maharashtra state council organised a 7,000-strong statewide rally on the state assembly session at Nagpur in the Vidarbha region on the above demands. The issue of indebtedness and the continuing peasant suicides in Vidarbha and other regions were naturally the main focus of this rally. Actually, the main mobilisation strength of the AIKS in Maharashtra is from Nashik and Thane districts, near Mumbai, over 800 Km from Nagpur. Even so, Nashik district had the lion’s share of the mobilisation in the Nagpur rally, but many other districts in the Vidarbha and Marathwada regions also made good efforts. A memorandum was submitted to the state government, but as usual, the government gave vague assurances. So far as compensation to the rain-affected peasants is concerned, the state government declared a package of Rs 1,000 crore for the same on the floor of the state assembly, but did not announce the concrete details of the cropwise compensation per hectare, under the plea that it did not have the statistics of the damaged crops.

From the AIKS state rally during the Nagpur session of the State Assembly, December 15, 2010

Therefore, the AIKS Nagpur rally gave a call for a massive statewide Jail Bharo and Rasta Roko agitation on the above issues and on burning local demands from January 26 to 31, 2011.       

Against Price Rise and for Food Security

In the months of March and April 2010, Maharashtra saw constant large mass actions against price rise and for food security. Although these actions were held under the banner of the CPI(M) and the Left parties, the AIKS participation in all of them was the largest. These include the 2,000-strong state convention against price rise at Solapur on March 3; the statewide ‘Halla Bol’ struggle on March 18, in which nearly 60,000 of the CPI(M) took part, of which the AIKS share was over 25,000; the RLDF state rally on the assembly in Mumbai on March 30 of around 20,000, of which the CPI(M) participation alone was over 10,000, of which again the AIKS share was over 5,000; the nationwide Jail Bharo stir of April 8, in which the statewide Left and secular participation was around 70,000, of which the CPI(M) share was around 45,000, of which again the AIKS share was around 20,000; and the nationwide hartal of April 27, in which thousands courted arrest all over the state in rasta roko and rail roko actions.  

A large 13,000-strong independent tehsil-level mass rally of the AIKS was held on October 13, 2010 at Akole in Ahmednagar district demanding the inclusion of poor farmers and agricultural workers in the Below Poverty Line (BPL) list, so that they get BPL ration cards and other BPL benefits. Over 13,000 such BPL application forms were submitted to the tehsildar, who was forced to accept them. Now this struggle has spread to the adjoining Junnar tehsil in Pune district, where another large AIKS rally will be held on December 31, 2010. 

For Implementation of the Forest Rights Act

On February 22, 2010, a delegation of the AIKS and AIAWU met the secretary of the Tribal Development department in Mumbai, which is in charge of the implementation of the Forest Rights Act (FRA). It brought to his notice not only the tardy implementation of the Act all across the state, but also the downright obstructionist stance taken by the bureaucracy and the Forest Department  in districts like Thane, Nandurbar, Ahmednagar, Yavatmal and elsewhere. The secretary was himself an Adivasi and had the reputation of being an upright officer. He immediately took cognisance of our complaints and rang up the concerned officials in the districts, ordering them to remove the bottlenecks in the implementation of the Act. This had a good impact. Later AIKS units in several districts followed up on this issue. In all the mass actions in March and April outlined above, the implementation of the Act was also made a major issue by the AIKS in all the tribal districts. But a few months ago, this officer was transferred.

On August 25, 2010, the AIKS and AIAWU under the banner of the Adivasi Adhikar Rashtriya Manch, organised two large rallies in Thane and Nashik districts on the question of the implementation of the FRA. The Thane district tribal rally at Jawhar was over 20,000-strong, while the 15,000-strong Nashik rally mobilised tribals from five districts of North Maharashtra, viz. Nashik, Ahmednagar, Nandurbar, Dhule and Jalgaon. Other rallies on the same issue were organised in August in Ahmednagar, Yavatmal and Nanded districts.

From the rally for Forest Rights Act implementation in Akole, Ahmednagar

On October 10, 2010, Tripura chief minister Manik Sarkar addressed a massive 35,000-strong predominantly tribal rally organised by the CPI(M) at Dapchari in the Dahanu tehsil of Thane district, where FRA implementation was one of the major issues. The AIKS mobilised in strength. Manik Sarkar’s speech outlining the excellent implementation of the FRA by the Left Front government in Tripura had a very good impact.

Manik Sarkar addresses the Adivasi rally in Dahanu, 10 October 2010

The participants at the Adivasi rally, Dahanu, 10 October 2010

However, the implementation of the FRA in Maharashtra still continues to be extremely unsatisfactory. The lack of political will of the state government and the bureaucracy and the undue interference of the Forest Department is creating numerous hurdles in the way of the Adivasis getting their rights over forest land. Notices have been sent in Nandurbar, Nashik and Ahmednagar districts to thousands of Adivasi peasants rejecting their claims, and appeals are being filed by the AIKS against these rejections with the District Collector. Some eviction notices have been sent to tribals in the Wada tehsil of Thane district. In Yavatmal district, efforts are being made by the Forest Department and the police to actually evict tribals from their land. The January 2011 Jail Bharo call of the AIKS at its Nagpur rally will thus elicit massive response in the Adivasi districts.

For Remunerative Prices to the Peasantry      

On October 20, 2010, a 1000-strong cotton peasants convention was organised by the AIKS at Parbhani in Parbhani district, demanding remunerative prices for cotton. On September 25, a 500-strong joint convention was organised at Parali Vaijnath in Beed district, demanding remunerative prices for sugarcane and fair wages for sugarcane cutters. Dharnas and demonstrations were organised in several districts by the AIKS, independently and jointly with other peasant organisations, on these demands. This was one of the major issues taken up in the November statewide actions and the December statewide rally of the AIKS referred to above. The AIKS is planning to organise a statewide paddy peasants convention in the month of February 2011. 

For Vesting of Temple Lands in the names of the Cultivating Peasants   

All over Maharashtra, there are tens of thousands of acres of temple lands (called Devasthan zamini in Marathi) which, although they have been tilled by poor and middle peasants for the last several generations, are not vested in their names, but are vested in the name of the Devasthan trusts. The tenancy act passed by the state government several decades ago excluded these lands from its purview under pressure of the powerful temple lobby. Since these peasants are not the legal owners of the land they till, they are not entitled to credit and other facilities that are generally granted to landowning peasants.

The AIKS in Kolhapur district has taken up the above issue for the last three years through struggle and several meetings and demonstrations have been held. Seeing the good response, the AIKS took up this issue in the adjoining districts of Sangli and Satara as well. On March 23, 2010 a Western Maharashtra level convention of peasants tilling temple lands was held at Sangli, in which over 600 peasants from three districts took part. It decided to intensify and expand the struggle to newer districts in the days ahead.

Against Blackmarketeering of Fertilisers and Seeds

In Parbhani, Beed, Wardha, Buldana, Nanded, Hingoli, Kolhapur and other districts, the AIKS launched struggles against the rampant black marketeering of fertilisers and seeds. Big demonstrations and gheraos were held and as a result, the administration was forced to take action against many big traders. The fertilisers and seeds so unearthed were sold to the peasantry at reasonable prices.

On Local Issues of Irrigation and Power

In Akole tehsil of Ahmednagar district, the AIKS has taken up the struggle demanding proper irrigation from the Nilwande dam. There have been a number of demonstrations, sit-ins and hunger strikes on the issue led by the AIKS. This has succeeded in mobilising the influential non-Adivasi peasantry in the tehsil also. We already have a base in the Adivasi peasantry there due to our championing of the Forest Rights Act. In Solapur district, the AIKS has been leading a struggle for irrigation water from the Ujni dam and many actions have been held.

In various districts, there have been local struggles on the questions of load shedding of power, massive and unjust electricity bills, the severing of power connections to the peasantry and other related issues.

ELECTION VICTORIES     

In the by-election to a Panchayat Samiti seat in Jawhar tehsil of Thane district that took place in October 2010, AIKS Thane district president Ratan Budhar won the seat by a massive margin. He garnered 51 per cent of the total votes polled and trounced his BJP and NCP rivals, both of whom together polled only 49 per cent votes.

In the gram panchayat elections held over the last few months, AIKS candidates won in various gram panchayats in districts like Buldana, Wardha, Parbhani, Beed, Nanded and Thane. Some of them were also elected sarpanches of their villages.

AIKS STATE CLASS AND WORKSHOP

The statewide class and workshop of the All India Kisan Sabha (AIKS) was held at the Comrade B T Ranadive Smarak Bhavan in New Mumbai on October 25-26, 2010. 134 delegates from 19 districts attended. The hall for the class was named after AIKS state vice president and former CKC member Krishna Khopkar. The state class was presided over by AIKS state president and ex-MLA J P Gavit and the state workshop was presided over by AIKS state working president and MLA Rajaram Ozare. The class was inaugurated by renowned journalist and Rural Affairs Editor of ‘The Hindu’, P Sainath.

AIKS President S Ramachandran Pillai took the class on the AIKS understanding of the agrarian crisis and the decisions of the AIKS Guntur national conference. In the second part of his class, he also stressed the need for a powerful organisation and on how to build it.

For the first time in a state AIKS class, state office bearers and state council members themselves had been asked to prepare notes on burning agrarian issues in Maharashtra on which struggles would be launched. The notes thus prepared were distributed to all the delegates. These comrades then briefly and effectively placed each of these issues before the class.

The nine topics and the comrades who placed them were as follows: 

1. Present agrarian crisis – its meaning, character and solution – Udayan Sharma; 

2. Indebtedness of the peasantry in Maharashtra – Dr R Ramakumar; 

3. Implementation of the Forest Rights Act – J P Gavit and Rajaram Ozare; 

4. The issue of irrigation and bankrupt state government policies – Dr Ajit Nawale; 

5. The question of SEZs and the new Maharashtra SEZ Bill – Sanjay Thakur; 

6. The issue of cotton prices – Yashwant Zade; 

7. The issue of sugarcane prices – Umesh Deshmukh; 

8. The question of temple lands and grass lands – Santram Patil; 

9. The public distribution system and food security – Manoj Kirtane.

AIKS state general secretary Kisan Gujar then placed the future action programme proposed by the state office bearers meeting held the previous night. The delegates then dispersed for group discussion for an hour, in which they concretised these tasks for their own district. One delegate from each district then reported to the class what they had decided. This last workshop session created enthusiasm among the activists to carry out the tasks that had been decided.

The five major decisions taken by the class were: 

1. On November 15, large and militant agitational actions would be organised by the AIKS at tehsil and district centres around specific state level and local demands. 

2. On December 15, the AIKS will organise a statewide march to the state assembly during its winter session at Nagpur. Eight major demands for both the above actions were identified. 

3. The AIKS membership drive will begin immediately and will be completed by the end of December. 

4. AIKS village committees would be activised for these agitational and organisational tasks; 

5. The dates of AIKS district council meetings to carry out these tasks were finalised.      

After the placing of the credentials report, the class was addressed by senior AIKS state vice president and former CKC member L B Dhangar. On the basis of his 60-year experience of working in the AIKS, Dhangar gave valuable suggestions for strengthening the movement. The concluding speech of the state class was made by AIKS state vice president and CKC member Dr Ashok Dhawale.

ORGANISATION

AIKS state office bearers and state council meetings have been regularly held during the last one year since the Guntur conference. Four such meetings were held on February 13-14, May 9, July 31-August 1, and October 25, 2010. The next meeting of the AIKS state council will be held on January 16, 2011.

AIKS state general secretary Kisan Gujar, along with other state office bearers, undertook a tour which covered 15 districts of the state in August and September 2010. AIKS district council meetings were held in each district and in these the planning for the coming year was done. These meetings had a good impact.

The membership drive for 2010-11 is in progress and most of the membership for the current year will be completed by the next AIKS state council meeting on January 16, 2011. This year, we have planned to reverse the membership decline that we suffered last year as a fall-out of the Lok Sabha and Vidhan Sabha elections.