Troubled Galaxy Destroyed Dreams: Chapter 35
Palash Biswas
http://troubledgalaxydetroyeddreams.blogspot.com/
I met Jaideep Hardikar in Nagpur for the first time when Mulnivasi bamcef organised a National convention against Citizenship Amendment Bill 2003. We met in the Press club. We had exchanged our views on different issues by mail for months. But I never expected the guy so young and so energitic! We discussed the issues relating Citizenship, Displacement, Refugees and Indigenous communities face to face in Nagpur. I got an impression that this young man is very sound in his studies and observation. We maintained the correspondence intermittently. It is very important. Because I met my close friend Faisal Anurag after 24 years. He is based in Jharkhand and I am living in Kolkata for 17 long years. Anurag and me share same ideas and opinions about Indian Polity, Economy and Society. We both had been involved in nationality movements. But we had no correspondence for 24 years. The executive editor of hans, Famous Short Story writer Sanjeev has been a friend since Dhanbad days. We have not met for a decade. I tried to meet him in New delhi, but failed. Urmilesh and madan Kashyap are the two very specific friends who are responsbile to make me a Professional Journalist. But we have not seen each other and a decade has passed. We all share this tragedy more or less.
But Jaideep, despite his busy schedule, is very serious to remain interactive.
I did not know anything about the New delhi discourse. I got the programme only in Rajdhani Express. I was very happyto know that Brother Anand and friend Jaideep would be there. Faisal told me that Urmilesh would also come. but he did not come.
Jaideep Hardikar is a Nagpur based journalist. He won a 2005 scholarship to research the agrarian crisis in Vidarbha from the Prem Bhatia Memorial Trust, New Delhi. He has also been a recipient of several national media fellowships and was the winner of the 2003 Sanskriti award from Sanskriti Foundation, New Delhi.
I thank NAFRE People`s movement to organise such a crucial event at this juncture of time where we had a greater scope for sharing our individual and collective experiences. I am also thankful to WBEN that it selected me to represent West Bengal as I am not so big a Gun in Bengal!
I am focusing on Jaideep not just for the shake of friendship or personal impression. Many more important friends participated in the unprecedented discourse between Media and Mass movement. I could have easily selected a person like Anand Swaroop Verma. But Jaideep was the person in the entire event who was able to place graphic details of great Indian agrarian crisis for which our dear most friend P Sainath or a person like Ram Chandra Guha are known very well.
Jaideep linked the issues of displacement, starvation, develoment and mass mobilisation to the Great indian agrarian Crisis. he mapped well this divided subcontinent. He put forward the facts and case studies in Vidarbha and Jharkhand.
Globalisation has created colonies. Globalisation would create colonies galaxywide in future. Sovereignity of Market and corporate Imperialism get strength from the Killing Fields scattered all over the Third world. Exploitation of natural resources is the Prime Agenda. The task may not be completed without mass annihilation of Indigenous communities worldwide. Indigenous Insurrection is the greatest challenge for the Post Modern Manusmriti Apartheid Hindu Zionist white Galaxy Order. Thus, War and Civil War make this galaxy troubled most!
Advancement of Market and its sovereignity, liquidition of nationalities, Identities and cultural roots along with social fabrics is defined as Urabanisation, Industrialisation and Development by the Global ruling class. But it is nothing but mass destruction for all the Indigenous communities worldwide. Post Modernism killing History, Genres and ideologies made the task a perfect Cat Walk on the Ramp. The Politics and so called Democracy are showcased agendawise in Reality Show Live!
The point Jaideep could focus very well is all about the Natural sources of Life and Livelihood! Which inevitably relates to the Great Indian agrarian crisis.
He blasted media to deal people`s suffereing as commdities. He told while a farmer commits suicide, media covers the event instantly and live. Because it is sensational.But media never goes beyond collecting Bytes and snaps for archive. The Agrarian crisis is overlooked. Overlooked is the Humanscape. No indepth study is available on the Great agrarian crisis. The modertime Economists deny the very existence of this crisis. for them the Economy happens all about the Sensex and the growth rate. it never relates to the Indigenous Production system or livelihood deeply linked to nature.
We all discussed the problems of nationalities, ethnic cleansing, persecution, human rights, civil rights, democratic institutions, constitution, ruling hegemony, killing culture, displace ment, starvation and food security, but we could not have pinpointed the debate on agrarian Crisis without young, energitic Hardikar, Jaideep!
Sanskriti Awardees 2003-04
JOURNALISM
Jaideep Hardikar : Born : 1975
Jaideep works hard on his stories and writes
with real human concern about the problems
of those people, who are displaced by the
development projects. He received the KK
Birla Foundation Fellowship and covered
seven states and 15 developmental projects to
understand how people live after being
displaced, what they do to eke out a living and
whether they benefit from the projects that run
over their lives. As an outcome of that project
he has written a book which is to be published
shortly. Travelling in some of the remote areas
of India where the development projects have
uprooted thousands of poor dalit and tribal
communities, he virtually saw what he
describes as castles over graves. When he
chose to work on the distress or forced
interstate migration he received the National
Media Fellowship of the National Foundation
for India in 2002.
These fellowships have proved a real training
ground in journalism for Jaideep, for he now
looks beyond to seek subjects blatantly
neglected by mainstream media. These issues
are covered not as ‘events’ but as ‘processes’.
His attempt through his journalism is to lend
voice to the voiceless – capture the other face
of development.
Jaideep Hardikar did his schooling from
Chandrapur and his college from Nagpur in
Science. He worked with Lokmat Times while
doing his Bachelor in Mass Communications.
He has also done the defence correspondents
course conducted by the Ministry of Defence.
Jaideep Hardikar is currently working with the
Hitavada as staff reporter.
Address: Jaideep Hardikar C/o Vasudeo
Bagade, Kamadar Niwas, Khamla Road,
Ayankatesh Nagar, Nagpur-25
DEVELOPMENT-INDIA: Cotton Farmers in Distress - Relief Given Elsewhere
By Jaideep Hardikar*
Jyoti holds up the picture of her husband Santosh Deshmukh, one of three indebted Deshmukh men who committed suicide
Credit:Jaideep Hardikar/IPS
PUNE, Maharashtra, Mar 21 (IPS) - On Mar. 4, barely four days after Indian Finance Minister P. Chidambaram announced a mammoth loan waiver for farmers, 55-year-old Dattu Chaudhary, who owned 3 hectares (ha) of land committed suicide in Nara village in Maharashtra state.
Two other farmers also ended their lives on the same day. All three were dry-land cotton farmers in Vidarbha, a region synonymous with farmers’ suicides in India. Poor cotton growers have been driven to death by debt.
Chaudhury gave up hope when he saw that he was above the finance minister’s cut-off mark of 2 ha (1 ha=approx 2.46 acres) for the bank loan waiver.
With 3 ha, he could only have got a 25 percent rebate on the loan, says his nephew Gajanan Chaudhury. Nara is 45-kms west of Wardha in western Vidarbha.
"My uncle owed 75,000 rupees (1,800 US dollars) to the State Bank of India. He was already bankrupt, he could not have repaid 75 percent all at once to avail of the rebate benefit," Gajanan told IPS.
The two other farmers who killed themselves by consuming pesticide were, as reports indicate, out of the institutional credit structure. Their loans were from private moneylenders. Chidambaram’s waiver gift is only for borrowings from public banks.
The finance minister said in Parliament that he expects 30 million farmers to benefit. Small and marginal farmers owe the banks 1.2 billion dollars, while the ‘one time settlement’ offer would cost 2.5 billion dollars to the government exchequer.
But most Vidarbha farmers are outside the limit. As farmer Vitthal Elkunchwar, 60, in Bhadumri village in Yavatmal district, puts it, "The total loan waiver is for 2 ha farmers, but thousands of farmers like me have land holdings of five acres, or just over 2 ha."
He owns 2-ha-2-R which equals 5 acres of land. ‘R’ is an old unit of land measurement. One acre of land is 40-R. He misses the cut off for total waiver by 2-R.
Nanda Bhandare, the widow of Dnyaneshwar, a farmer with six acres who committed suicide in 2005 owing to distress, can barely hide her tears. She cannot avail of the total waiver. With two children and her old mother-in-law to look after, she has struggled. "I can’t repay my loans; the land is giving me no income," she cries.
In Katiyar Village, Akola District, Jyoti Deshmukh’s husband who owned 20 acres of cotton land killed himself in 2007. Before that her brother-in-law and father-in-law took their lives.
Farm leader in Wardha, Vijay Jawandhia, believes the loan waiver package benefits western Maharashtra’s farmers more than those in Vidarbha. "When the country enacted the Land Ceiling Act, it imposed a ceiling of 18 acres on irrigated areas and 54 acres in the dry land areas. Naturally, 30 years later, farmers with irrigated land have smaller land holdings than their counterparts in the rain-fed areas."
As a result the average per capita holding in Vidarbha is 3.03 ha (7.5 acre), which is far bigger than the average of 1.75 ha in the sugar belt of the Pune revenue division. More importantly, the average loan burden on Vidarbha farmers is only 200 dollars, a fourth of the average outstanding loans of farmers in the irrigated western Maharashtra districts, as per the government’s cooperative department’s records.
The average crop loan from the banks for sugarcane is 325 dollars per acre. Apart from which farmers get up to 450 dollars per acre for drip irrigation. In Vidarbha’s cotton regions, the average loan is just 110 dollars per acre. The scale of the finance minister’s write-off for relatively better off farmers is greater.
Maharashtra minister for cooperation Patangrao Kadam says the state would get benefits to the tune of 3.2 billion dollars, or over a fifth of Chidambaram’s 15 billion dollars waiver outlay. But, Vidarbha’s share would be around Rs 375 million dollars, while that of western Maharashtra about 1.5 billion dollars.
The agriculture department's statistics show that roughly half of Vidarbha’s 3.5 million households have up to 2 ha of land. Of this, 760,000 farmers have less than 1 ha. It is not clear how many get bank loans. By one estimate, more than half of Vidarbha's distressed farmers are out of the formal credit basket.
"That is one reason why thousands of them borrow money from private usurers at exorbitant rates for farm and domestic needs," explains Mohan Jadhav in Pandharkawda town, Yavatmal district.
Often poor farmers are not the land owners, and hence ineligible for bank loans. Most land holders do not bother to transfer holdings to their name. Farms are shown as undivided in village records even years after it was partitioned among family members.
Farm leaders like Jawandhia point out that by itself Chidambaram’s total farm loan waiver is puny when compared with the annual tax and duty concessions given to a handful of industries.
Loan write-offs to industry are done quietly. Between 2000-04, government-controlled banks cancelled a staggering 11 billion dollars, mainly to a few wealthy people.
Every year banks write off 20,499 crore rupees (5.1 billion dollars) as bad debts for industry, which is the total amount owed to banks by some 7 million farmers with less than 1 ha land. This is from the Reserve Bank of India’s, Handbook of Statistics on the Indian Economy, 2006-07.
Thirty year-old Vandana Shende’s husband was driven to suicide by debts two years ago. "We were unable to repay debts. Even today, much of that loan remains to be repaid," says the frail woman, who has been tilling the land, a little over 2 ha. "Of the 85,000 rupees (2,125 dollars) I owe, 15,000 rupees (375 dollars) is from the bank, the rest is from private sources," she confides. "Over two thirds of Vidarbha farmers' debts are on non-institutional credit," says Kishor Tiwari of the Vidarbha Jan Andolan Samiti, a farmers’ movement.
A Planning Commission team that visited Vidarbha in 2006 found banks considered only a quarter of cotton farmers as credit worthy. It was only after Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's much-publicised two-day visit (Jun. 30 and Jul 1) that the number of farmers in institutional credit went up to 50 percent in Vidarbha.
Munna Bolenwar, a farmer with 15 acres of unproductive and unirrigated land in Vidarbha, shares his anguish. "The government has provided relief to sugarcane farmers, when the real distress is here," he told IPS.
(*This is the third and final story in a series on the role of subsidies in Indian agriculture.)
(END/2008)
http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=41681VIDARBHA FARMING CRISIS
Suicide in a distant land
In Vidarbha, where over a thousand farmers have taken their own lives in last the four years over unabated distress, Venkanna Ramayya Rayee's suicide has an unusual edge. A farmer from neighbouring Andhra Pradesh, his name won't figure as an entry in the suicide ledger in either state. Jaideep Hardikar has more.
12 March 2006 - Zari Jamni, Yavatmal: Venkanna Ramayya Rayee was escaping distress in Andhra Pradesh, his native state. He couldn't escape it in Vidarbha, a distant land.
So, when the 21-year-old chilly farmer, originally from Guntur, suffered staggering losses last year and stared at a certain disaster this year too, he swallowed pesticide in his cramped hut at his farm on February 2.
Red and Hot: Venkanna Ramayya Rayee, a chilly farmer from Guntur, in Andhra Pradesh was farming leased land in Yavatmal's Mucchi village in Zari Jamni block, Maharashtra. In the red and under huge debts, he committed suicide to end unending penury.
Venkanna's became an unusual suicide in the cotton belt of Vidarbha, a land where over a thousand farmers have taken their own lives in last the four years out of debt, losses and unabated distress.
In Maharashtra, Venkanna's name won't figure as an entry in the suicide ledger, and neither will it in Andhra. His suicide would go down unnoticed as a death in the alien land. As the agrarian distress threatens to engulf crops other than cotton in not just this region but other states too, the young farmer could not escape the fury. It was just a matter of time.
"He suffered staggering losses," says Yellamanda Kotaiyya Bellam, an old farmer and distant relative of Venkanna. As did the tens of other chilly growers who farm the land taken on lease from local cotton farmers.
But Venkanna could not have recovered the production cost from the yield even this year, which was the cause of his tension, says Narayana, a relative, who farms the plot next to that of the Venkanna's in Mucchi village, 40 km south of Pandharkawda in Yavatmal. Chilly prices have dipped to an all time low today, even as the inputs prices skyrocketed.
Venkanna's risks were manifold – the crop was his but the farm was not. And with no insurance cover, there was nothing to fall back upon once the crop suffered irreparable damage.
Series by Jaideep Hardikar
• Vehicle loan currents in turbulence
• Poison reaches them, not govt
• Suicide in a distant land
• 350 and counting
• Loan after loan devastates
• Another farmer ends his life
• The end of innocence
• No cheques, no balances
• Poll freebies not much help
• Cotton marketing fails farmers
• Vidharbha: A suicides diary
Tens of Andhra farmers lease agriculture land from cultivators in Vidarbha every year, a trend that picked up in the mid-nineties when Telangana was devastated by successive droughts and policies belting the peasants. Venkanna cultivated about nine acres of land at a lease rate of Rs.4500 per acre. Which means, he paid Rs.40,500 on lease alone. Add to that the per-acre production cost of Rs.35,000, plus the transportation costs post-harvest. The largest component of the production cost is seeds, chemicals, and electricity, constituting nearly 40-50%.
"This year chilly prices stand at Rs.2500 a quintal down from Rs.5000 at least in 2002-03," mumbles Narayana, worry writ large on his face. The price drop has been caused by a bumper crop and price rigging by market players at Nagpur, the main hub for chilly. There is no minimum support price (MSP) for chilly currently, and volatility in international markets has also impacted prices. With chilly economics turning the other way in a span of two years, Andhra farmers here were plunged in huge losses. Their debts obviously piled up.
Explains Suresh Bolenwar, a farmer from Hiwra Barsa village in Kelapur tehsil: "If a chilly farmer fails to get an average 20 quintals of yield, he is set to be doomed. The economics would not work out in his favour then."
Indeed, when they made profits, they made it big time. But in the volatile markets as the prices slid down, these farmers too ran into trouble, says Kishore Tiwari, convenor of the Vidarbha Jan Andolan Samiti (VJAS) at Pandharkawda. "They do intensive farming, involving greater risks."
Adds Venkatrao, another chilly farmer: "Every crop failed last year, but chilly failed totally." Also take this: Venkanna's risks were manifold – the crop was his but the farm was not, and there was nothing to fall back upon once the crop suffered irreparable damage without any insurance cover.
"Every farmer is in trouble, and chilly grower is no different," Tiwari says sarcastically. The issue of pricing is central, he adds. And until that is addressed, the government won't be able to bail them out of debt-trap.
Venkanna's name does not figure in the list of 367 suicides of Vidarbha in the current agriculture season till March 10. He does figure in the post-mortem logbook though at Pandharkawda sub-district hospital. And that's the only proof of distress that the Telugu farmer was in, in a land away from his homeland. ?
Jaideep Hardikar
12 Mar 2006
India: Politics of Starvation
By Sudha Ramachandran
Asia Times
November 12, 2002
At least 40 tribals, most of them children, are said to have starved to death over a span of a month in the western Indian state of Rajasthan. It is a situation of the cruelest irony for even as the death toll from starvation mounts and hundreds waste away without food to eat, India’s granaries overflow.
It was a probe by the People’s Union for Civil Liberties that uncovered the horrifying details of the starvation deaths in the Baran district of Rajasthan. Cultivation has ceased here for the area is reeling under its fifth successive year of acute drought. The local tribals have been reduced to dire poverty. Desperately short of food and driven by hunger, the tribals have turned to eating a wild grass called sama. This grass is hard for humans to digest. As a result, the tribals, especially children, have developed severe digestive ailments, resulting in death.
The starvation deaths in Rajasthan are a replay of a similar tragic story that unfolded in poverty-stricken Kashipur in the eastern state of Orissa last year. There, tribals driven by poverty and unable to buy even the subsidized rice provided through government ration shops were forced to eat fungus-ridden mango kernel.
As the starvation deaths in Kashipur hit the news, the Orissa government claimed that those who died were victims not of starvation but of their tradition of consuming mango kernel and boiled grass even while grain is available. The truth was that the tribals were forced to eat the poisonous kernel for want of an affordable choice.
In Rajasthan, the government is now claiming that the tribals prefer eating wild grass and that the deaths were caused by poor hygiene and disease. Government officials are busy defining starvation to prove that these were not starvation deaths. A starvation death is when there is no food material in the stomach, and government officials shamefully point out that the victims had eaten grass. Whatever the spin, it is hard to deny that the deaths were hunger-related.
The starvation deaths in Kashipur and Baran are just the tip of the iceberg. Hunger is widespread in India. It is said that at least 50 million Indians are on the brink of starvation and over 200 million Indians are underfed. This, when a 60-million-ton surplus of foodgrains is rotting in various government warehouses in the country.
That so many are hungry despite overflowing granaries is a damning indictment of the government’s public distribution system (PDS). The PDS is a network of about 460,000 ration shops across the country through which grains, sugar, cooking oil and so on are sold at subsidized rates.
However, most of India’s poor, such as those who starved to death in Orissa and Rajasthan, cannot afford to buy the grains even at these subsidized rates. Many of them do not possess the Below Poverty Line (BPL) cards that entitle them to purchase at subsidized rates in ration shops. In several cases, the desperately poor have mortgaged their BPL cards to moneylenders or local traders.
Besides, the process of identifying the poor is severely flawed. An article in Outlook magazine points out that in Dharavi, Asia’s largest slum, situated in Mumbai, just 151 families are identified as BPL. Millions of poor across the country are categorized in government records as Above Poverty Line (APL).
Food policy experts say that the pricing of foodgrains for APL and BPL categories is far too high. They have pointed out that the price of grain is sometimes cheaper in mandis (local markets). Consequently, the PDS grains have few takers and state governments have been unwilling to lift the grains they are allocated. This means that foodgrains in government warehouses remain unutilized. Because of poor quality and inadequate storage facilities, millions of tons of foodgrains are eaten up by rats or simply rot.
According to Planning Commission statistics, a third of the surplus food stocks (31 percent of the rice, 36 percent of the wheat and 23 percent of the sugar) in the government warehouses that is meant for the PDS is siphoned away by a nexus of politicians, officials and traders into the black market. One study indicates that 64 percent of rice stocks in Bihar and Assam, and 44 percent and 100 percent of wheat stocks in Bihar and Nagaland respectively "disappear" from the PDS.
There are several government relief schemes for the rural poor. Reporting from Baran, Bhavdeep Kang writes in Outlook, "Given the large number of central and state food aid schemes, it is hard to understand why the Sahariyas [the tribe that has been worst hit by hunger and starvation in Rajasthan] are in the plight they’re in today. There are special provisions for the old, infirm, pregnant and lactating mothers, school-going children and infants. There are food-for-work programs run by the village panchayat [village-level government] to provide employment. Even the World Bank sponsors a poverty alleviation scheme in the district. On paper, no one needs to go hungry. Ground reality is starkly different."
Many of the central and state government aid programs are not being implemented, Kang points out, adding that no effort is made to monitor their implementation.
While the failure of the PDS has often been attributed to corruption and poor implementation, P Sainath, author of the book Everybody loves a good drought writes that the PDS has "wilted under policies aimed at dismantling it. Part of the 'doing away with subsides' theme." He calls for examining the issue of hunger-related deaths against a larger canvas of the string of anti-poor steps taken by the government post 1990.
Sainath argues that while the government is cutting down on subsidies to the poor in the country and denying grains to them at prices they can afford, it is subsidizing the export of wheat by over 50 percent. "The export price of wheat is even less than the BPL rate of that item in many states. India is exporting lakhs [hundreds of thousands] of tons of rice at Rs 5.65 a kg. In Andhra, a government sells rice to people in drought-hit regions at Rs 6.40 a kg," he points out.
It is not without significance that hunger-related deaths and poverty-related suicides in rural India have mounted dramatically since 1990, when the Indian economy started liberalizing. Equally telling is the fact that it is in the states of Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Maharashtra - the states where World Bank policies have been implemented most diligently - that the number of poverty-related suicides have mounted most dramatically.
The starvation deaths at Kashipur prompted the Indian Supreme Court to direct the government to "devise a scheme where no person goes hungry when the granaries are full and lots are being wasted due to non-availability of storage space". The court had asked the government to open the public distribution shops in the areas worst hit by hunger in order to make food available to the poor and hungry.
A year on, the starvation deaths in Rajasthan indicate that the government has done little to address the problem - and now the issue has taken on political overtones.
Opposition leader president Sonia Gandhi said at the weekend that the central government had not done enough for the state.
Criticizing the "insensitive attitude" of the center toward extending help to states, Gandhi said "the chief ministers of the states and myself had gone to the prime minister [Atal Bihari Vajpayee] seeking central assistance in August this year, but instead to acting positively the government is playing politics.
"We had asked for special assistance for the drought-hit states, but our pleas went unheeded. We shall now take up the matter in parliament," she said, adding that drought was a serious problem that needed the greater attention of the government in New Delhi.
INDIA: Starvation deaths occurring in Murshidabad district, West Bengal
HUNGER ALERT HUNGER ALERT HUNGER ALERT HUNGER ALERT HUNGER ALERT
ASIAN HUMAN RIGHTS COMMISSION - URGENT APPEALS PROGRAM
7 March 2005
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HA-02-2005: INDIA: Starvation deaths occurring in Murshidabad district, West Bengal
INDIA: Starvation death; government inaction and neglect
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Dear friends,
The Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) has received information from Manabadhikar Suraksha Mancha (Masum) in West Bengal, India, that people in Murshidabad district are dying of starvation while the government authorities have not taken any effective action to stop the deaths. One five-year-old boy is reported to have been eating dirt before he died. According to a local doctor, "The entire area is under threat of insufficient nutritious food."
Masum reports that no government programmes to address starvation are properly functioning in the area, despite the fact that the local authorities are well aware of what is going on.
The AHRC urges you to write to the concerned authorities, including the Chief Minister of West Bengal, and call on them to take necessary emergency action to stop any further deaths from occurring in Murshidabad district, and longer-term steps to address the food crisis there.
Urgent Appeals Desk -- Hunger Alert
Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC)
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DETAILED INFORMATION:
Location: Dayarampur village and surrounding areas, including Udayanagar, Suryanagar Colony and Paraspur, Murshidabad district, West Bengal, India.
Persons affected:
Numerous, including
1. Azizul Haque
2. Alimuddin Seik, aged about 67, husband of Jahida Beoa
3. Jahida Beoa, aged 60, wife of Alimuddin Seik
4. Sattar Seik, aged 50
Date of last reported death: 25 February 2005 (deaths ongoing)
On a recent visit to the Murshidabad district of West Bengal, colleagues of Masum were shocked to hear reports of numerous recent starvation deaths among villagers there, about which the authorities appear to be doing nothing. Some of the reports that Masum has received are as follows:
1. Neimuddin stated that his brother Azizul Haque died of hunger because of no work to earn a livelihood. Neimuddin said that before his brother died he had not witnessed any cooking at his home for days. His brother finally died of starvation. Up to today Azizul's wife and son are starving, and may also die from hunger soon.
2. Sukuda Bibi, a relative of Alimuddin Seik and his wife Jahida Beoa, says that both of them died recently after their bodies swelled up from malnutrition. Sukuda Bibi told the Rural Health Centre of Sadikhanrdeyar that there was no food at home. Whatever they had, no matter how unhygienic or lacking in nutrition, they ate up in a desperate and ultimately failed attempt to survive. DrAshish Kumar Ghosh, the Medical Officer attached with the Rural Health Centre, said that, "The cause of death in Jahida's case was associated with old age problems. However, malnutrition was one of the major causes of her suffering. I visited the victims' village and found that the entire area is under threat of insufficient nutritious food."
3. Sattar Seik died of hunger at the Behrampur District Sadar Hospital. He was referred there from the Rural Health Centre of Sadikhanrdeyar. On this case Dr Ashish Kumar Ghosh said, "We don't have proper and sufficient medical equipment and so we have to refer our patients to the district hospital." Dr Matiur Rahman, a doctor attached to the Behrampur District Hospital said, "The patients who have been referred to here are not in condition even to utter a word. They have been kept on oxygen but nothing can be said regarding their improvement."
4. Shyamali Halder said, "Another five-year-old boy also died suffering from the same cause. Five days ago his stomach was swelled up. It was found out that he had been living by eating dirt. For many days there had been no cooking in his house."
According to Masum, "Every day someone or the other dies of hunger in the village of Dayarampur or among other adjacent villages. They have not even heard of Annapurna Yojana, a central government scheme intended to give them food grains when in need. One handicapped man named Amir Shah complained that their names have not even been included in the Below Poverty Line list, which would allow them to apply for assistance."
When the Sub-divisional Officer of Murshidabad, Mr Rabindranath Sarkar, was approached he admitted that there is an acute problem and shortage of food grains in different villages of this district. He said that he is trying to make his best possible effort from a limited capacity. He also said that he has informed the District Magistrate about these incidents.
Mr Kanchan Chowdhury, the Block Development Officer of Jalangi, in Murshidabad district, said, "Women of this locality are fleeing to other places to get work. We are looking for options to address this economic crisis. Hopefully it will work out soon."
Mr Yunush Sarkar, a Member of the Legislative Assembly, West Bengal, said that like other countries, people in Murshidabad too are below the poverty level, but he denied that they are dying of hunger.
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:
Masum has also written the following:
"The hunger in Murshidabad district has affected the villagers so badly that a large number have been displaced to other areas looking for means to survive. Large numbers of students are dropping out of the schools, as it is almost impossible to carry on studies with an empty stomach, and they are being sent by their families to work elsewhere. People say that so many meetings have been held with the local Block Development Officer and other officers attached with the local civil administration, and also the village council, but all have been in vain.
"Apart from this, fertile agricultural land, houses, cattle and everything are being ruined, and the environmental conditions are worsening. These villages are situated along the river Padma, the bank of which has been eroding for the last ten years. As a result, fertile land is being lost. Since 2002 the erosion has rapidly increased. Almost all able-bodied male members of Dayarampur village have left in search of work elsewhere, leaving their elderly, female members and children at home, who are falling prey to starvation. Last year too, two children breathed their last due to starvation.
"The government is making mockery of basic human rights. According to the authorities, India is now self-sufficient in food grains. Our country is also sending so many shiploads of grain to different countries affected by natural calamities like the tsunami, while our own people are dying for want of food. The warehouses of the Food Corporation of India are full, but the people in such circumstances have nothing. The West Bengal government is letting its people starve in violation of its constitutional obligations, and those under international law."
SUGGESTED ACTION:
Please write to the Chief Minister of West Bengal and other relevant government officials regarding these starvation deaths. A sample letter follows.
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Dear Mr Bhattacharya,
Re: Starvation deaths occurring in Murshidabad district, West Bengal
I am shocked to hear of reports of numerous starvation deaths among villagers occurring in Murshidabad district, West Bengal, about which the government authorities appear to be doing nothing. Some of the cases of which I have been informed include the following:
1. Neimuddin stated that his brother Azizul Haque died of hunger because of no work to earn a livelihood. Neimuddin said that before his brother died he had not witnessed any cooking at his home for days. His brother finally died of starvation. Up to today Azizul's wife and son are starving, and may also die from hunger soon.
2. Sukuda Bibi, a relative of Alimuddin Seik and his wife Jahida Beoa, says that both of them died recently after their bodies swelled up from malnutrition. Sukuda Bibi told the Rural Health Centre of Sadikhanrdeyar that there was no food at home. Whatever they had, no matter how unhygienic or lacking in nutrition, they ate up in a desperate and ultimately failed attempt to survive. DrAshish Kumar Ghosh, the Medical Officer attached with the Rural Health Centre, said that, "The cause of death in Jahida's case was associated with old age problems. However, malnutrition was one of the major causes of her suffering. I visited the victims' village and found that the entire area is under threat of insufficient nutritious food."
3. Sattar Seik died of hunger at the Behrampur District Sadar Hospital. He was referred there from the Rural Health Centre of Sadikhanrdeyar. On this case Dr Ashish Kumar Ghosh said, "We don't have proper and sufficient medical equipment and so we have to refer our patients to the district hospital." Dr Matiur Rahman, a doctor attached to the Behrampur District Hospital said, "The patients who have been referred to here are not in condition even to utter a word. They have been kept on oxygen but nothing can be said regarding their improvement."
4. Shyamali Halder said, "Another five-year-old boy also died suffering from the same cause. Five days ago his stomach was swelled up. It was found out that he had been living by eating dirt. For many days there had been no cooking in his house."
According to the information I have received, almost every day someone or other dies of hunger in the district. These persons have never even heard of Annapurna Yojana or other food relief schemes, and persons whose names should be included on the Below Poverty Line list have not been registered.
I am informed that the Sub-divisional Officer of Murshidabad, Mr Rabindranath Sarkar, has admitted that there is an acute problem and shortage of food grains in different villages of this district. He has also informed the District Magistrate about these incidents. Mr Kanchan Chowdhury, the Block Development Officer of Jalangi is reported to have said that large number of persons, including women, are leaving the area in desperate search of work. Mr Yunush Sarkar, Member of the Legislative Assembly, West Bengal, has also admitted that people in the area are below the poverty level, but he has denied that they are dying of hunger. According to local people, so many meetings have been held with the Block Development Officer and other officers attached with the local civil administration, and also the village council, but all have been in vain.
It is reported that one of the major reasons for hunger is worsening environmental conditions. These villages are situated along the Padma River, the bank of which has been eroding for the last ten years. As a result, fertile land is being lost. Since 2002 the erosion has rapidly increased. Almost all able-bodied male members of Dayarampur village have left in search of work elsewhere, leaving their elderly, female members and children at home, who are falling prey to starvation.
I urge you, in accordance with domestic and international law, to take responsibility for the basic food needs of your people, and ensure that no further starvation deaths occur in Murshidabad district. Additionally, I urge your government to take steps to prevent further deterioration of the Padma River, and compensate the victims of erosion for their losses. The affected villagers should also be relocated and rehabilitated without delay.
Yours sincerely
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More General Analysis on Poverty and Development
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SLASH, BURN, SUSTAIN
Jhum cultivation under conflict in the Northeast
http://www.indiatogether.org/2008/jun/agr-jhum.htm
Shifting cultivation in the Northeast, called jhum, is under stress because of conflicts and industrialisation. Sriram Ananthanarayanan examines how the cycle of jhum cultivation is getting adversely affected, causing immense hardship to the people dependent on it.
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27 June 2008 - Unlike many other parts of India, where even villages are in some way or the other connected to the capital markets, albeit through informal means, people in the rural hills of Northeast India for the most part engage in pre-capitalist sustenance activities, with surplus produce sold in nearby bazaars. The most important and widespread activity is shifting cultivation, of primarily the slash-and-burn variety along the hill slopes. This practice, called jhum, usually ensures enough grains and vegetables for the entire year.
Along the lines of the egalitarian functioning of most tribes in the region, this form of cultivation has men and women playing equally large roles, with women often even playing a dominant role especially in deciding the distribution of the produce and the selling of the surplus. Jhum is a livelihood generation activity for food sustenance, and constitutes a large chunk of the labour performed by rural folk in the hilly regions of the Northeast.
Jhum in Nagaland. Pic: author.
In recent years though, the system has been affected by the numerous ongoing conflicts in the region, causing immense hardship to those people dependent on it. In addition, questions have been raised about jhum's impacts of the practice on the local ecology, which need a brief examination. Behind the negative viewpoints expressed about jhum, lie vested interests, more often that not, as this article will show.
About jhum
Anyone who has done mountain hiking would confirm that trekking up a steep hill slope, even for fairly fit individuals, is tough work. Jhum requires far more hardiness and consists of chopping firewood along a tract of hill-land, clearing that tract through controlled fires for cultivation, cultivating on the land as per a tight seasonal schedule, and then carrying large bundles of firewood (often uphill) back to one's village in the evening for cooking fire.
This gives an idea of how, by sheer dint of hard physical labour, the rural poor find sustenance in the region. It's a cooperative system of production with a village or many villages cultivating one tract of land and then sharing the produce at the end of the harvest, completely devoid of feudal fetters.
The timeframe for jhum is fairly strict, especially keeping in mind the heavy rainfall in the area, requiring the land to be cleared and seeds sowed in time for the monsoons. The forest land is usually cleared in December and January by slashing at shrubs, and cutting trees, while leaving tree stumps and roots. The slashed vegetation is then allowed to dry for a month or two before burning the tract of land in March. In addition to clearing the land, the burning of the leftover vegetation returns nutrients to the soil through ash and the killing of microbes allowing relatively higher yields. Seeds are then sowed, which mainly consist of cereals, vegetables and oil seeds.
The practice is usually driven by sustainability and the village or group of villages practicing jhum on one particular tract of land continue until the soil is depleted of nutrients and then move on to another allowing the former tract of land to regenerate. In earlier times, with lower population numbers, the land would be cultivated on for 10-20 years, but now it rarely goes beyond three to five years, due to greater pressures on the land for food. The acute time-sensitivity of the cycle is important to note as this feature of the practice is most affected by the various ongoing conflicts in the region.
Effects of the conflicts
Large sections of rural Northeast India and their modes of commerce now function under the sway of Indian military cantonments, which have usurped expansive tracts of land and harshly affected rural livelihood activities. Furthermore the villagers often find themselves caught in between the military and the insurgencies. Thus the practice of jhum has started getting badly affected in many parts of the region due to the presence of the Indian army and the resulting conflict, which causes disruption in the cultivation cycle resulting in harsh insecurities for people depending on the produce to feed themselves.
Mokokchung in Nagaland is a classic example of military cantonments taking over prime land across Northeast India. Traveling with a senior academic and Naga human rights activist in the town, I witnessed the overwhelming presence of the Indian military. Central Reserve Police Force barracks built over beautiful forestland, and vast army campuses sprawled over the landscape were everywhere, cordoned off from the rest of the population. Many old structures in Mokokchung were torn down and now serve as official military offices. Vast tracts of hilly forestland that villagers would practice jhum on are now completely off limits, taken over, rather 'occupied', by the armed Indian state.
The villagers often find themselves caught in between the military and the insurgencies.
The practice of jhum has started getting badly affected in many parts of the region due to the presence of the Indian army.
The resulting conflict causes disruption in the cultivation cycle resulting in harsh insecurities for people depending on the produce to feed themselves.
• Jhum cultivation under sharper scrutiny
The hampering of rural modes of sustenance can also be witnessed in numerous rural areas in Manipur, Upper Assam as well as regions like the Garo and Khasi Hills of Meghalaya. Rural areas in these states also often face the brunt of the extraction industry, which, again, usurps or completely destroys land previously used for sustainable cultivation systems like jhum. Furthermore, with the Indian government's new 'Look East' policy with respect to trade and commerce, states like Nagaland, Assam and Meghalaya become critical as gateways to expanding trade-relations with Southeast and East Asian countries. As a result local modes of sustenance such as jhum get impacted.
Interestingly, the present disruption of rural modes of production in Northeast India has just been a continuation of pre-independence British policies. This form of agricultural production and organic rural commerce has faced a history of upheaval from colonial times onwards, when British colonisers effectively severed the region from its traditional trading partners, including present-day Burma and other parts of Indo-China. With the creation of the Northeast Frontier by the British in order to protect their Indian dominion, it effectively cleaved what was once an organic commercial pre-capitalist trading region, resulting in the loss of a bazaar-type commerce, and hampering cultivation practices; something which has continued till date under an Independent India.
Impact on ecology and differing viewpoints
Ecologically, the practice of jhum has had certain experts convinced that it has a deleterious effect on the local environment, while others have often thwarted those arguments and proved that jhum in fact is a sustainable form of agricultural production best suited for the specific ecology of the hill regions.
The arguments against jhum have included projecting it as an unsustainable practice that depletes the soil of nutrients, reducing the forest cover, causing landslides, etc. Arguments against jhum have come from state forestry departments, development ministries like DONER (Development Of North East Region) or trade promoting entities like the World Bank who lean towards utilisation of the region's forest resources for the benefit of national and private capital.
In addition, private entities wishing to utilise the land for specific profit-making ventures, like extraction industries, utilise these arguments to push the state to wean away local villagers from practicing jhum in order to lease the land. This has happened in the hill regions of Meghalaya and Assam where corrupt or otherwise, village councils leased out land to private and national corporations for extraction industries including coal, limestone, and uranium in the future. In addition, the paper industry has pushed for the growth of bamboo by villagers as a cash crop replacing an egalitarian cultivation system with one that has created a small mercantilist class controlling all bamboo production.
However, these arguments have been rebutted by many scientists, including studies by organisations like the Indian Institute of Science, Tata Energy Research Institute and UNESCO who have proved in different ways that jhum is indeed a sustainable form of agriculture best suited to the rainy hill regions of Northeast India, over other forms of agriculture such as valley or terrace cultivation. Studies have further proved that, contrary to arguments of soil infertility, the practice of jhum ensures that fallowness in the soil is not compromised on, and often rapid regeneration of the vegetation takes place once a tract of land is abandoned after cultivation.
Cleared tracts of hill slopes. Pic: author.
The connection between forest loss and jhum is tenuous at best as there are numerous other factors at play including areas where jhum is practised, the type of vegetation regrowth and fallowness of the land. The soil erosion argument too has been disproved as soil erosion would happen with any cultivation along hill tracts, and if anything is minimised with jhum due to the retention of strong roots when the land is cleared.
This is not to completely discount the actual arguments being made against jhum. There has indeed been a small reduction in the forest cover, and certainly the food pressures have increased in the region due to greater population. However it is the source of these arguments, their vested interests and the lack of viable alternatives provided that cause eyebrows to be raised. There is no guarantee that if jhum were to be stopped, there would be an increase in forest cover and soil fertility or a decrease in soil erosion. If anything, all these problems are likely to continue with even more intensity along with the added food insecurity of the local population due to the wrenching away of their primary mode of sustenance.
The arguments are all the more problematic because the region still continues to have one of the highest per-capita forest covers in the world, and its people are for the most part not found wanting for food, primarily due to practices like jhum.
Furthermore, it would be prudent to ensure the continuance of the basic level of food sustenance that the people in these regions have created for themselves through cooperative cultivation without any feudal fetters, rather than force the capital market upon them via land leases and cash crops, placing them in the precarious position many farmers in other parts of India often find themselves in.
Looking ahead
As mentioned before, the practice of jhum is intimately integrated with the socio-economic fabric of rural society in Northeast India. It's sustainable and generally accepted as a rather egalitarian mode of production, with women playing an important economic role, and almost completely lacking in feudal fetters. The practice plays a central role in uniting villages and clans, as well as integrating the people with local modes of commerce. Furthermore it provides food sustenance for the people, and prevents them from being subject to the whims of the larger capital market.
Ideally, state governments would need to work with local populations on jhum to mitigate the potential deleterious effects to the ecology rather than prevent shifting cultivation per se. Indeed, this seems to be the increasingly accepted viewpoint by state governments in Northeast India and other countries where the practice is widespread, and is certainly a positive trend. The governments of Nagaland, Meghalaya, Tripura, Arunachal Pradesh and Assam have indicated at different levels that they would not like to suppress shifting cultivation, but rather work on ways in which it can be integrated with ecological and conservation concerns.
Among the more prominent of these initiatives has been the government of Nagaland pursuing a policy from 2006 onwards of procuring horticulture produce from people practicing jhum and training government extension staff in participatory mapping, the Meghalaya government stating in 2004 that it would examine ways in which jhum can be integrated with soil and water conservation measures, and the Tripura government initiating shifting cultivation development projects from 2007 onwards.
These are positive trends, and need to continue considering the importance of jhum to rural populations in Northeast India, as well as the central role it plays in ensuring food sustenance through an egalitarian cooperative mode of agricultural production. ?
Sriram Ananthanarayanan
June 2008
FERTILIZER SHORTAGES
From market yard to police yard
Fertilizer shortages have sparked unrest across large swathes of rural Maharashtra and other States as well. In Washim, every constable and officer is deployed right within the police compound, distributing fertilizer. P Sainath reports.
20 May 2008 - In Maharashtra, where the nation's most distressed farmers have been denied the benefit of the 'farm loan waiver,' the government is said to waive crores in entertainment tax that the Indian Premier League cricket matches would normally attract. Media reports in Mumbai on this score reckon that means a loss of up to Rs.10 crore in revenue. As even the pro-corporate newspapers of the city point out, the direct beneficiaries would be Mumbai's millionaires and billionaires. Film stars and corporate bosses who did not find it difficult to spend crores on buying teams and players. That too, for what the media are fond of calling "the world's richest cricket tournament." Simply put, if it goes through, they'll be getting tax waivers on the hiring of cheerleaders, among other things.
True, this is not the first time that entertainment tax has been waived on cricket matches in Mumbai or elsewhere. The BCCI and its affiliates have always enjoyed political patronage. The difference, which has got even members of the ruling front worked up, is that those raking in the crores in exemptions are for-profit-only groups and individuals. By law, any event, musical or cultural, performance or other, staged for profit must pay entertainment tax. But not the IPL, which will have held 10 matches in Mumbai including the Final.
It's an odd situation. The overwhelming majority of Vidharbha's farmers do not gain from the farm loan waiver - because they are too "big." That is, they hold more than two hectares of land. But the IPL waiver goes to some of India's richest millionaires and billionaires. They aren't too big. And the only reason Vidharbha's farmers have holdings that exceed the loan waiver's two-hectare cut-off is because they are dry-land farmers. Their fields are poor, un-irrigated and less productive.
The IPL waiver reports come within three weeks of the Comptroller and Auditor General's report on "Farmer's Packages" in the State. A performance audit the government of Maharashtra chose to present to the Assembly on April 27, the last day of the session. A day on which, as MLAs say, "there isn't enough time to count the pages, let alone read the many documents they push at that time." Clearly, they were not eager on a discussion of the contents.
The very first page of the CAG report tells us why. Despite the State government's Rs.1075-crore "package" for farmers "the suicides, however, continued unabated and the number increased to 1414 during 2006-07." The Prime Minister's visit in mid-2006 and the Centre's Rs.3750-crore package that followed in July also came the year the suicides increased. As we know from earlier reports, including some in this newspaper, they actually went up in the second half of that year.
Erratic spending
Here is the CAG on the official response: "No evaluation of the implementation of the packages, in terms of reduction in agrarian distress, was made." We also learn that tens of crores of rupees aimed at reducing farmer distress were, in fact, never spent. The value of the packages themselves was exaggerated by over Rs.200 crore. Crores were released under some heads with no reference at all to the actual requirement of funds.
Other funds, such as those meant "for increase in production," were released late. Cheques given to some 'beneficiaries' "were dishonoured for want of cash in the bank." The "self-help groups were paid subsidies in excess of admissible norms." Parts of other funds were not released at all. In head after head, funds were underutilised. This is how lackadaisical the governments were with packages worth a total of Rs.4,825 crore. So what's Rs.10 crore for the IPL?
But the CAG report, which is devastating from start to finish, does not stop at that. It has a clear premonition of things to come. On the "interest waiver" that followed the Prime Minister's visit, it says: "While reimbursing banks for interest waived on loans, sanction of fresh loans was not ensured."
That is exactly where most farmers now find themselves again after the "massive farm loan waiver." Fresh credit is very hard to come by. Distress has not come down. There have been over 360 farm suicides since January this year, about 200 of them post-loan waiver. In the official count, there were 153 in January and February. And of these, only 18 were considered "eligible suicides." That is, only 18 families had any hope of being compensated for losing a breadwinner. The figures for March and April will turn out to be much worse.
There was a hope, after Rahul Gandhi's plea in Parliament, that the two-hectare cut-off point would not be imposed on dry-land farmers in places such as Vidharbha and Anantapur. But it was. The very places whose misery had sparked the idea of a loan waiver now stand mostly excluded from it.
There is a very important point the CAG report brings out that tends to get glossed over most of the time. That the farmer's world is not driven by agriculture alone. Farmers, whose incomes have been plummeting, have been hammered by education and health costs. The commercialisation of those sectors has hurt them, as it has countless millions of other Indians, very badly. That is on top of the stick they've taken in agriculture.
"Distress amongst farmers on account of cost of education was not measured." The "allocation of funds (Rs.3 crore at Rs.50 lakh per district) for health was meagre ..." It mentions the government's own survey showing that the health issues were huge and required much larger action.
The farmer's world is not driven by agriculture alone. Farmers, whose incomes have been plummeting, have been hammered by education and health costs.
• What a lovely waiver!
• CAG report slams package
One of the most important things the CAG points to is the State government evading its own findings. In mid-2006, the government organised what was the biggest door-to-door survey of farm households ever done. It covered over 17 lakh households, that is, all farming households in the six "crisis districts" of Washim, Akola, Yavatmal, Buldhana, Wardha and Amravati. Over a fourth of those families - that is, more than two million people - were found to be in "maximum distress." And more than three quarters of the rest were in what the report called medium distress.
In other words, close to seven million people were in distress in just six districts. That was the finding of the most massive study, powered by over 10,000 field workers. And a report of the State government itself, at that.
Yet, says the CAG, "the selection of beneficiaries ? had no relation to the departmental survey conducted for the assessment of distress. As a result, the prioritisation of relief and rehabilitation works considering the distress level of farmers could not be ensured." Why did the State government ignore its own study? Because the results of that huge survey are, to this day, explosive. Also, de-linking the distress survey from the packages meant you could reward your friends who might never have been in crisis.
Catalogue of failure
One line recurs in different ways through the CAG report: "Authenticity of reported expenditure was doubtful in the absence of proper classification of accounts." Throughout, the report is a catalogue of failure too serious to be written off as "error." On inputs, which farmers were desperate to get at reasonable prices, there was poor assistance. Farmers were hit hard by a poor supply of seed when they needed it most. Seed requirements for several crops, suggests the CAG, were simply not taken seriously. "The estimates were not realistic as these were made based on the amount allocated to this component and not based on actual requirement."
The CAG report captures at the top end, the state of things on the ground. Being a performance audit, it confines itself to that task. It is not a field report. However, the portrait it presents of the government's performance is a sharply accurate one. A picture that sits perfectly with the chaos at the receiving end below.
In the end, this is more than just a report. It is a snapshot, or a series of snapshots, of how governments, particularly the one in Maharashtra, are responding to agrarian distress. The complete apathy, the corruption, the cover-ups, even the contempt for the farmer, that come across. This is a State where all the attention is on the brilliantly-lit, power-guzzling matches of the IPL. It is also a State where many regions face power cuts ranging from 3-16 hours each day. And countless children have completed their examinations without being able to study much. The huge power cuts meant darkness in their homes when they returned from school.
The report is about the packages in this State. But if we extend our thinking a bit, it should lead us to reflect on things much larger. On the crisis in the countryside, on those being marginalised or just driven away. On regions beyond this one and on our attitude towards those who grow our food but can less and less afford to eat it themselves. ?
P Sainath
20 May 2008
P. Sainath is the 2007 winner of the Ramon Magsaysay award for Journalism, Literature, and Creative Communication Arts. He is one of the two recipients of the A.H. Boerma Award, 2001, granted for his contributions in changing the nature of the development debate on food, hunger and rural development in the Indian media.
http://www.indiatogether.org/2008/may/psa-waiver.htm
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LOST LIVELIHOODS
Starvation persists in Orissa
Several cases of starvation deaths have been reported in Orissa, especially in areas with high tribal populations. Added to this, government inaction in response to the crisis deepens people's woes. Arpan Tulsyan reports.
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19 July 2008 - Last November, Santara Naik, a resident of Dhirapatna village of Dhenkanal district in Orissa, died of starvation. Today, his wife Sajani lives in their half-broken, neat but empty dwelling, with their two daughters and a grandson. There's no need to ask her questions about the reasons behind Naik's death. Her appearance conveys more than words could ever do - she herself is nothing more than a bundle of bones.
Sajani traces his death to Orissa government's 1998 ban on using bamboo from forests. The ban came because of the increased commercial importance of non-timber forest produce, kendu leaf, sal seed, and bamboo, all of which were nationalised in Orissa, thereby entailing only the state to collect and market these products. (Sal was nationalised in 1983 and kendu leaf in 1973.)
Naik had made his living till then by collecting bamboo from forests, weaving baskets and selling them at the village market. However, after the ban, he couldn't collect bamboo and didn't have the financial resources to buy it from the market. He had no other skills and could not find an alternative source of livelihood. As he had no experience in agricultural work, and as he belonged to a Scheduled Caste, villagers did not call him for agricultural labour. In the last years of his life, Naik, an artisan, was reduced to soliciting food from villagers.
Santara Naik
Now, almost nine months after his death, his 50-year-old wife and his daughters, aged 28 and 15, haven't found any employment either. Villagers do not enlist their services for the same reasons they avoided Naik. Compounding the problem is their low body weight and high malnutrition levels, which make it impossible for them to do any labour-intensive work.
By no account is Naik's story a unique one in Orissa, where hunger and starvation persist scandalously. Because of a number of problems, ranging from livelihood crisis and indebtedness to distress migration, prolonged malnutrition and non-implementation of government schemes, starvation amongst the state's population is not at all uncommon. Even the consumption of inedible items such as mango kernels, poisonous roots and tubers and similar so-called 'distress food' items - often passed off as 'traditional tribal food' - indicate the existence of high levels of hunger and starvation in the state.
There are no concrete figures for the number of starvation cases in Orissa, as the government itself has so far not acknowledged that there is a problem. It was only because of sustained pressure from the media, the judiciary, the National Human Rights Commission and citizen's groups that the Orissa government released what is considered as an underestimated figure of instances of starvation deaths in the state. Koshala Development Forum, an organisation that undertakes research on under-development in Orissa's tribal-dominated Koshala region, cites in its working paper no.1, 2004, a written statement by revenue minister Biswabhusan Harichandan about starvation deaths presented in the State Assembly, published in Utkal Sambad, an Oriya daily. From 2000 to 2003, 441 starvation deaths were reported in the state, the minister said. Of these, 268 deaths were from the southern region, which has a high tribal population.
Defining starvation
The Orissa government thus far seems to have relied on a narrow definition of starvation to refute reports of starvation deaths. And it's true that not many people die exclusively because of starvation. Starvation weakens the body and the person eventually succumbs to a disease, due to his or her severely compromised immunity. Take the case of Nakula Naik, a 45-year-old from Mangalpur village in Dhenkanal district, who died of starvation in February this year. A Dom by caste, he too was a bamboo weaver like Santara Naik, and faced problems in procuring bamboo. In addition, he developed asthma and therefore could not do manual labour. Gradually, the family had to live on mendicancy and face acute starvation. Although the sarpanch helped him get admission in a hospital, he was released before his full recovery as he did not have the money to continue treatment. The family lived by consuming 'distress-food' items such as wild leaves and tubers. After his death, his wife and his one-year-old child continue to be threatened by starvation. A half-broken dwelling and a few vessels are their only worldly possessions.
Though in normal circumstances, a disease like asthma may not be fatal, a person who is starving is unable to combat it. However, disease, and not starvation, is given as the official reason for death. Moreover, public officials tend to believe that starvation means absolutely no intake of food. Therefore, if the post-mortem reveals a few grains in the stomach of the deceased, starvation reports are rubbished.
A number of problems, ranging from livelihood crisis and indebtedness to distress migration, prolonged malnutrition and non-implementation of government schemes, have resulted in people starving.
• NREGA battling corruption
• Why their kids are dying
To develop a concrete definition of starvation, activists from Jan Swasthya Abhiyan, the Indian branch of the global People's Health Movement, formed a 'Hunger Watch Group' and came up with a measurable guideline. Their Guidelines for Investigating Suspected Starvation Deaths 2003, says, "In adults, a BMI [Body Mass Index] of 16 and less should be used as a cut-off point to demarcate starvation from under-nutrition. Based on a requirement of 0.7 kcal per kg per hour, a 50 kg person needs about 850 kcal per day to maintain oneself at Basal Metabolic Rate, without any physical activity. Thus any food intake that is sustainedly lower than 850 kcal per day would be incompatible with life in due course and is an indication of starvation."
Chaman Lal, Special Rappoteur of the National Human Rights Commission, is quoted as saying in activist Harsh Mander's book Towards a Food Rights Code, "A person does not have to die to prove that he is starving. This insistence on death as a proof to starvation must be given up. Continuance of a distress situation is enough proof that a person is starving." The Hunger Watch Group also affirmed that starvation is a public heath issue, as mortality occurs even in case of diseases that are not ordinarily life-threatening. As Hunger Watch's guidelines state, individual malnutrition deaths are often extreme examples of severe malnutrition prevalent in a community. Therefore, it calls for a community diagnosis.
A public heath issue
Apart from livelihood issues and resultant poverty, one major reason why starving people succumb to disease in Orissa is the lack of access to modern-day healthcare. Starvation deaths, which are reported from the Similipal national park in Orissa almost every year, confirm this. A report by ActionAid Orissa, dated June 2006, notes that there had been 18 reports of children's deaths in the first five months of that year. In 2005, 23 people had died, 13 of who were children. The report also noted that inaccessible and unaffordable healthcare facilities were a major cause of child starvation deaths. In Simplipal, the nearest hospital is located 23 km from the gram panchayat headquarters, and even further for remote villages. The ambulance provided by the district health unit charges Rs 5 per km to transport patients to the government-run Jasipur Hospital, which is the closest. Most people are not able to afford the fare, and therefore, the sick have to walk or be taken on a cycle.
The report quotes Purnami, a resident of Gudugudia village in Simlipal district, as saying, "I took my son Mantu to hospital once by ambulance but cannot pay the amount a second time although my son is still suffering." Purnami lost her husband due to malaria soon after marriage, and is now struggling to save her five-year-old son and seven-year-old daughter, who are severely sick and malnourished. Kumati Dehury, also from Gudugadia, has a six-year-old child who's suffering from malnutrition and often gets fever. She cries as she describes how difficult it's for them to get any attention from doctors who treat them with little dignity at the hospital. The report notes that as agriculture is underdeveloped in the village, most residents make a living by picking minor forest produce and selling timber and firewood.
Though basic healthcare is subsidised or free on paper, corruption is said to prevail at government hospitals. In addition, indirect expenses such as transport and food costs, and loss of wages, result in healthcare becoming unaffordable to the poor. The significant amounts that they are forced to spend on healthcare often lead them into a heavy debt trap. "Simlipal's villages, which are inhabited by tribal communities, are thus forced to resort to quacks. Locked inside their leafy green jail, they are dying of disease and apathy," says the ActionAid investigation report.
Failure of government schemes
On February 16, 2008, Pratap Barala, a reporter with local newspaper Pragatibadi, wrote about the plight of a blind, 70-year-old man in Dhenkanal. Development Initiative, a human rights organisation in Orissa, investigated this case. Bimbadhar Pradhan, the old man, lives with a widowed daughter-in-law, a teenage granddaughter and a polio-affected grandson. No one in his family is able to earn except his granddaughter. Despite her daily toil, her earnings are not enough to support the family of four. Their Antyodaya card lies unused as they have no money to buy grains even at the highly subsidised rates.
Dhoba Dehury
In the same village lives Dhoba Dehury, a Sabara tribal, who saw his sons and wife die of disease caused by malnutrition. Despite frantic attempts, he could not gather enough money to save his family. He earned a little through casual, daily wage labour, barely enough even to survive, but is today old and destitute, and completely dependent on his brother-in-law, who himself is living on the edge. Weakened and malnourished, Dehury has lost his strength to walk. Without even a homestead land, he sleeps in the brother-in-law's cattleshed and has only straw to cover himself, even in winters. The only help Dehury has received from the government is a Below Poverty Line ration card. However, he cannot draw any ration as he has no cash to pay for it. Despite the scheme's universalisation, he is not yet covered under the old-age pension plan.
Development Initiative's fact-finding team had two important conclusions to make: Dehury is starving and if timely help is not provided by the district administration, he is going to be a victim of starvation. The team's report, dated March 2008, was submitted to the National Commission of Scheduled Castes.
People living in villages of Simlipal national park travel 13 km to Gudugudia gram panchayat headquarters to get their rice, kerosene oil and sugar, under the Public Distribution System schemes, either every month or once in two months. Though many have Antodaya cards, they receive only 25 kilos of rice as against the entitlement of 35 kilos. This happens almost all the time, according to the ActionAid report.
The report says that the villagers own small plots of land, which provide a major share of the food that they consume. However, due to mono-cropping, the produce lasts only for 4-5 months. For the rest of the year, they depend on minor forest products, which are difficult to access. Their other source of livelihood should ideally have been employment under government programmes, but these are only occasionally available. According to the ActionAid report, in 2006, not a single day of employment had been generated under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS) till June of that year.
When death doesn't mean an end to trouble
Santara Naik of Dhenkanal died in November 2007 of starvation despite having a BPL card and a job card under NREGS. He couldn't purchase grains because he didn't have an income, and he was never given employment. Naik even reported to the sarpanch and the ward member that he was starving. They gave him Rs 50 to travel to meet the district collector, who in turn sent him to the Block Development Officer (BDO). The BDO was indifferent and offered no immediate help. The sarpanch gave him 10 kilos of rice twice, but after that got over, his family had to live on wild food items. When Naik became too ill to move, government officials didn't take note of the situation, despite repeated complaints from his wife. The family was occasionally given some rice obtained as part of the mid-day meal programme at the village school, but this wasn't regular.
To date, Naik's family has not been given an Antodaya card. On their BPL card, they get only 10 kilos of rice against a quota of 25 kilos and they purchase it with the Rs 200 they are given under the old age pension scheme. However, the grains last only for 10 days a month and they have to depend on mendicancy for the rest of the month. The money given as family benefit is over now and again, the family sleeps hungry for many a days. The daughter, Jhunu Naik, says," How long can we continue to beg and eat, we too will die of starvation someday." Even after Naik's death, neither his wife nor his daughters are being given work under NREGS.
The villagers of Dhirapatna have sought an investigation into Santara Naik's death. They have written applications to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, the Prime Minister, Congress President Sonia Gandhi, and to Dhenkanal district collector Jamil Ahmed Khan. Lawyers from Development Initiative also appealed to the National Commission for the Scheduled Castes, and presented to them their investigation reports, including the one concerning Dehury.
When the commission sought an explanation from the district authorities, the collector's report accused the NGO of "fake reporting and total misrepresentation of facts". It alleged that Naik's death was due to "old age and prolonged illness". The collector's report put Santara Naik's age at 70 though his voter identity card says he is 61. His family reports no disease prior to death.
Similarly, Nakula Naik's family was provided an Antodaya card after his death, but is getting only 10 kilos of rice on it. His wife continues to live in their broken house, where an old saree serves as the ceiling. The collector gave the family Rs 300 as funeral expenses while the sarpanch gave Rs 100. The ration dealer gave them 10 kilos of rice, two litres of kerosene and 2.5 kilos of pulses. Officials claim that they had given the family Rs 5,000 for medical treatment but the family denies this.
As far as Dehury is concerned, the collector's office claims that he is not starving as he has an Antodaya card and a house sanctioned in his name under the Indira Awas Yojana. However, Dehury's card is used by his brother-in-law as Dehury himself doesn't have money to buy even at the subsidised rate of Rs.105 for 35 kilos of rice. Even the house purportedly given to him isn't actually his as he cannot pay the Rs.8000 that has to be given to the sarpanch to get the house registered in his name. Pradhan, and several others in Orissa, suffer the same fate. ⊕
Arpan Tulsyan
July 2008
Arpan Tulsyan is a social researcher with Centre for Equity Studies. The author thanks Biren Nayak of ActionAid Orissa, as well as Development Initiative for sharing reports of their investigations.
http://www.indiatogether.org/2008/jul/pov-starve.htm
Starvation rears its head in eastern India
NEW DELHI: While government warehouses across the country brim with excess grain, a shocking spate of starvation deaths is a symptom of what some call the "silent creeping crisis" in India's farm policies.
While the government is urging farmers to get plugged into world markets by planting more cash crops like soya, the poorest of the poor in drought-ridden areas are vulnerable to food shortages and starvation, even when grain silos are full.
For a month, newspapers and television have daily shown pictures of emaciated villagers and potbellied children eating porridge made from dried mango kernels - the only food available in villages across famine-stricken Rayagada district in Orissa.
Media reports say 23 people have starved to death, or died from eating decayed mango gruel, while 60 million tons of grain, kept in reserve by the government, are rotting in warehouses across the country. Opposition politicians put the death toll at over 50 and say a recent spate of farmer suicides in southern India underscores the seriousness of the crisis.
The Supreme Court - which recently has become an increasingly vocal critic of government policies ranging from failed rural food distribution to appalling pollution levels in the capital-censured the government for failing to supply food to the starving.
Federal authorities, however, have backed claims by Orissa officials that people are dying not of starvation but food poisoning from kernels infected by fungus.
Rayagada district official Bishnupada Sethi said people are eating mango kernel gruel "because it is a tradition in their community."
He said the gruel turned poisonous because it was stored in unhygienic conditions, a statement that was even repeated by Prime Minister Atil Bihari Vajpayee.
According to federal government figures, 325 million people, nearly a third of India's billion-plus population, live below an officially defined "poverty line." At least 50 million of these people are on the brink of starvation.
The government keeps large stocks of grain in reserve to use in times of widespread famine. For more localized flashpoints of hunger, it releases smaller amounts in exchange for ration cards.
The government has identified millions of Indians as eligible for a ration card guaranteeing basic food at cheaper prices. With the card, staples such as wheat or rice cost about 4 to 5 rupees per kg, compared to Rs 7 per kg on the open market.
But even the subsidized prices are too high for many of India's poor. They already have debts with local grocers or moneylenders and are forced to pawn their ration cards to guarantee further credit.
With the cards, media reports and Opposition leaders say, moneylenders and middlemen connive with government officials to sell about 60 per cent of the rationed grain on the open market at a premium.
One farmer who fell foul of the system is Biswanath Majhi, an emaciated figure lying listlessly on a cot outside his straw-thatched hut in Panasaguda, an Orissa village.
His wife, son and mother are dead - among the most recent victims of the food shortage. He must still try to feed two younger children with stick-like arms and legs.
Majhi angrily dismissed the government claims.
"It's wrong to say that eating mango kernels is a tradition," he said. "We've been eating this gruel because there is no rice available. We have no choice."
State officials stress that Orissa is a victim of the vagaries of India's monsoon-driven farming cycle and has a sad record of natural disasters.
This summer, maize and vegetable fields were washed away by floods. In 2000, crops withered in a severe drought. Two years ago, Orissa was devastated by a cyclone that killed 10,000 people and destroyed millions of homes.
Economists and policy makers agree that the recent deaths underscore a basic problem: Not the lack of grain but the poorest Indians' lack of purchasing power.
The government wants to transform agriculture, which accounts for more than a quarter of India's Gross Domestic Product and employs nearly two-thirds of the population.
More than a decade of good rains have resulted in surplus buffer stocks, and rice is now an important export. Hybrid seeds and modern farming techniques have brought spectacular gains in crops in some pockets of the country.
But the shift away from subsistence farming has also led to a concentration of larger farms, with landlords buying out small-time peasants and turning them into landless laborers. They earn little and are more vulnerable to food shortages.
"In the last decade there has been a decline in per capita food production," said K Nagaraj, professor at the Madras Institute for Development Studies. He blames the crisis on gradual cuts in state investment in agriculture and failure to back public distribution systems.
"I call this the creeping silent crisis in Indian agriculture," he said. ( AP )
Agrarian Crisis and Agrarian Struggles
1. A serious crisis has broken out in the field of Indian agriculture. The crisis is most glaringly manifested in the growing incidence of starvation deaths and farmers’suicides. While the largest number of starvation deaths are still routinely reported Back to Home
Political-Organisational Report
Table of Contents
Publisher’s Note
International Situation and Our Tasks
The Developing National Situation and Our Basic Orientation and Tasks
Major Political Campaigns and Initiatives
United Front Practice
Review of Elections and Parliamentary Practice
The Karbi Anglong and NC Hills Experience
Agrarian Crisis and Agrarian Struggles
Women’s Front
Student-Youth Front
Cultural Front
Party Organisation
Conclusion
from the backward regions of the country especially Orissa and now increasingly Rajasthan, the trend of suicides generally prompted by heavy indebtedness, crop failure, or inability to find a market for the produce, is noticed even among well-to-do farmers in the agriculturally developed areas of Punjab, Maharashtra and Karnataka.
The crisis has also led to a new phase of agrarian unrest. Peasants and farmers have strongly opposed the WTO, growing penetration of giant agribusiness firms and attempts to corporatise agriculture. Once again powerful farmers’ movements are being witnessed in the areas of green revolution, Punjab and Haryana in particular. But the original exponent of farmers’movement in the country, Mr. Sharad Joshi, now stands on the other side of the fence. The erstwhile World Bank official-turned-farmer leader today advises the NDA government on matters of agricultural policy while the farmers are braving lathis and bullets on the streets.
Apart from attempts to suppress the agitation, the ruling classes are also trying hard to divide and divert the movement. The Cauvery water crisis that recently rocked Karnataka and Tamil Nadu is a case in point. Instead of coming up with any solution to save the crops and the affected agricultural population in both the states, the two state governments and the central government made it into an issue of inter-state wrangling while bourgeois politicians in both the states addressed the issue in the narrow framework of regional interests and whipped up sectarian passions.
2. While the WTO agreements, especially the removal of quantitative restrictions (QRs) on imports, and as a result, the thoroughly unequal competition with heavily subsidised big corporate farmers from the western countries have aggravated the present crisis situation, at the root of it lies the accumulated anomalies of the underlying landlord path of capitalist development in Indian agriculture. The landlord path pursued in India under the slogan of the green revolution had typically been based on the betting-on-the-strong strategy with little benefits really percolating to the lower rungs of the agricultural population.
The macro-level results were of course quite impressive with foodgrains production recording major increases and thus enabling a gradual transition from extreme food scarcity and dependence on external aid to a semblance of food security and self-reliance. But the green revolution’s spread to relatively backward areas was constrained from the beginning by serious infrastructural problems. With declining public investment in agriculture and rising prices of all key inputs, the green revolution soon reached a point of saturation even in its initial strongholds. The farmers’movement in the 1980s with its loud demand for remunerative prices and cheaper inputs reflected this brewing crisis.
3. Against this backdrop, bourgeois ideologues within the farmers’ movement started demanding liberalisation of agricultural trade and reversal of land reforms. Sections of big farmers started dreaming about exporting to the world market and securing super-remunerative prices. This was quite akin to the corporate clamour for freedom from ‘licence-permit-quota raj’. But whether for the would-be ‘Indian’ MNCs or the Indian farmers eyeing their shares in the world agriculture market, it did not take long for the dream to turn sour. And then just as the corporate sector started demanding ‘level-playing field’ even as it began forging closer ties of collaboration with the MNCs, big farmers came up with the demand for insulation from the WTO. Yet behind this demand they too are developing a close nexus with agribusiness corporations. Just as the working class has to see through the corporate clamour for level-playing field, agricultural labourers, poor peasants and their small farmer allies must not be misled by the rich farmers’ apparent crusade against the WTO but intensify their independent mobilisation against WTO.
4. The official explanation of the present crisis veers around the hypothesis of overproduction. Instead of expanding the system of public procurement and distribution, the government wants to privatise the foodgrains trade and run a truncated distribution system in the name of better targeting. Farmers unable to sell their crops at minimum support prices announced by the government are therefore being advised to go in for crop diversification and switch over to cash crops. This indiscriminate diversification is bound to pose a serious threat to food security. Figures of per capita availability of food grains already show a stagnating and even declining trend.
The new agricultural policy indicates the official response to the growing crisis of the landlord path of capitalist development. Reversal of land reforms, corporatisation of agriculture, contract farming, crop diversification, expansion of food-processing industry etc. constitute the main components of this new policy. While fertiliser subsidies are being constantly reduced, and the price of key inputs like diesel and electricity is increasing steeply, food-processing industry is being showered with tax and excise exemptions. In other words, the subsidies being denied to the farming community are being transferred to mega corporations, which can be called a case of reverse cross-subsidisation. Introduction of genetically modified seeds and bio-technology is also strengthening the corporate stranglehold on agriculture. The new agricultural policy and WTO regime is also affecting the realm of procurement, distribution and trade. Dismantling of the official procurement and public distribution system and privatisation of the agricultural trade are the new mantras. While the government refuses to increase the procurement prices it has steeply increased the PDS prices.
Just as a practical consensus has evolved among almost all bourgeois parties, national and regional, over the new economic and industrial policies, with even the CPI(M)-led state governments complying with it, a similar agreement has also begun to crystalise around the new agricultural policy. And if anybody needed a shocking proof of this emerging consensus, once again it is supplied by the Left Front government of West Bengal which has commissioned the American consultancy firm McKinsey for formulating the policy blueprint for what the CPI(M) calls ‘consolidation of the Left Front’s gains in the field of agriculture’.
5. Barring small sections of big farmers the current agrarian crisis has obviously affected various sections of the agricultural population. The demand for remunerative prices has now been pushed back to the demand for minimum support price and guranteed procurement, or in other words, freedom from distress sale. Similarly in the case of agricultural labourers, the demand for assured employment has become one of the most key demands even as wages often remain depressed way below the officially proclaimed minimum level. But with their relative economic power and much greater political clout, the rural rich, the kulaks and well-to-do farmers always try to transfer the burden of the entire crisis on to the rural poor. It is the latter who are being forced to make the greatest sacrifice and surrender whatever gains they had achieved through years of struggle.
One look at the picture emerging from Left ruled West Bengal will indicate the extent of the growing burden of the accumulating agrarian crisis on the rural poor. We are singling out the case of West Bengal precisely because it is one state which boasts of the best record of land reforms and it is in rural Bengal that the longest serving Left-led state government of India is known to be most deeply entrenched. According to a recent status report released by the Land Reforms department of the Government of West Bengal, over 13% pattadars (who had been allotted land under the land reforms act) have been dispossessed and among the recorded sharecroppers 3.02% have been evicted from their barga land. If this is the officially acknowledged trend in Left-ruled West Bengal – activists familiar with the ground reality may well find the figures an understatement – the conditions obtaining in Congress and BJP-ruled states or for that matter in Rabri Devi’s Bihar and Mayawati’s UP are not difficult to imagine.
6. This changing agrarian scenario has once again sharpened the debate between the reformist and revolutionary agrarian programmes, in practice as well as in theory. The reformist line calls for broad peasant unity which is nothing but a euphemism for abject appeasement and unchallenged domination of the kulak lobby. And it sacrifices the interests and struggles of the rural poor at the altar of this undifferentiated peasant unity. It is to this end that in its updated party programme, the CPI(M) has watered down the land redistribution clause by deleting the provision that land for redistribution would be seized without payment of any compensation.
In practice the CPI(M)-led Kisan Sabha in West Bengal is now in many cases already brokering land deals and that too on behalf of the kulaks. In spite of resolutions to organise agricultural labourers as a class force, in West Bengal the party is still hesitant to make any beginning in this direction. The party’s West Bengal State Conference held in February this year confessed that wage struggles of agricultural labourers were being increasingly neglected by most district units of the party, wages being left completely at the mercy of market forces.
In sharp contrast to this pro-kulak collaborationist approach, the revolutionary approach takes the task of mobilising the rural poor and defending their interests as the point of departure. Organising agricultural labourers and other rural labourers as an independent class force – the rural proletariat – and protecting the specific interests of marginal and small farmers in the face of a deepening agrarian crisis remain our highest priorities. We must continue to uphold the revolutionary programme of radical land reforms and must in practice intensify the struggle for implementation of land reform laws while raising the demand for lowering of the land ceiling so as to make more land available for redistribution. Even in a state like West Bengal, the total area of redistributed ceiling-surplus land amounts to only 8% of the total cultivable land in the state.
Our agarian programme attaches a lot of importance to the issues and demands of the middle peasants and our class line calls for a resolute alliance with middle peasants while winning over even a section of the capitalist farmers as well. In practice, our reach however remains quite limited. Given the intensity of caste-class divide in many parts of rural India, especialy in states like Bihar and UP, and the rise of kulak-based regional parties, it has been difficult for the party of the proletariat with its strong identification with the rural proletariat to make inroads among the middle peasantry. The present situation of agrarian crisis marks a major opportunity for us to boldly address the issues of the middle peasantry without in any way diluting our primary commitment to the rural proletariat.
7. It is against this backdrop that we have to review our ongoing agrarian struggles and decide our future course of action. Recent times have witnessed a surge in agrarian struggles not only in our traditional strongholds of Bihar, but also in pockets of UP, Andhra, Orissa, West Bengal, Jharkhand and Punjab. While land, tenancy, wages and employment remain the basic and most common issues of agrarian struggles, we also find many powerful initiatives on issues like electricity rates, debt relief, procurement of food grains and various aspects of rural development and functioning of the panchayat system.
In Bihar, West Champaran district bordering Nepal and Uttar Pradesh has emerged as the latest stormcentre of land struggles. This district still has a very high incidence of well entrenched landlordism. Estates controlling thousands of acres of land are still quite common. Electoral politics in the district is directly dominated by these estates and apart from their own armed henchmen they also enjoy the loyalty of the local police. There is this revealing case of two MLAs belonging to the same estate, one MLA elected on a Congress ticket serves as a minister in the Rabri Devi cabinet while the other MLA elected under the banner of the BJP sits in the ‘opposition’! The Khet Mazdoor Sabha (agricultural labourers’association) in the district has successfully redistributed 400 acres of land in Gaunaha block among 600 agricultural labourers. In Mainatand block, landless poor peasants have secured control over 300 acres of land illegally controlled by one absentee landlord. The district administration is trying to suppress these struggles by unleashing barbaric police repression, but the masses are offering a determined resistance.
In the key central Bihar districts of Bhojpur, Patna and Jehanabad, where agrarian struggles had temporarily been relegated to the background by the reactionary violence unleashed by the Ranvir Sena, land and wage struggles are again gathering momentum. In Baruhi village of Sahar block in Bhojpur district, control has been wrested over 10 acres of ceiling-surplus land. This land had originally been captured in 1992 but the Ranvir Sena had managed to snatch it back. In July 2001, landless and poor peasants reestablished their control defying the police-administration -Ranvir Sena nexus. The next month, hundreds of agricultural labourers and poor peasants occupied 46 acres of math land in Andhari village. The land was hitherto controlled by the Ranvir Sena. In Raipura village of Charpokhri block an absentee landlord was gradually selling off land that earlier used to be leased out. The agricultural labour organisation intervened and rescued 38 acres of land. In Baga Math of Sandesh block, 55 acres of ceiling surplus land had been lying fallow. When the Mahanth tried to get the land cultivated with the backing of the Ranvir Sena and the police, hundreds of people from neighbouring villages chased away the Ranvir Sena goons and seized the land and resumed cultivation in a part of it.
In recent times, Jehanabad district has witnessed a series of wage struggles. During June-July 2001, Daidi village of Ghosi block became the centre of a determined strike that began around the issue of payment of compensation to an injured agricultural labourer. When the employer refused and all employers got united around a henchman of the local MLA and Jehanabad strongman Jagdish Sharmaa and threw up a challenge to the labourers, the latter too took up the cudgel and the strike now also raised the demand for minimum wages. Eventually the administration intervened and a sum of Rs. 15,000 was awarded as compensation. The wage settlement however came later after another round of struggle. When the employers tried to violate the settlement by taking away the customary facilities enjoyed by the labourers and denying equal wages to women workers, the labourers again resorted to strike and eventually the employers had to concede the demands. Protracted wage struggle is also going on in Rostampur village of Ghosi block where the local PWG leader has sided with the employers who, in turn, are backed by the Chairman of the District Council, while most of the PWG supporters have joined the struggle. Even in the face of police repression, the morale of the striking workers continues to be quite high.
In Koil village of Kaler block of the newly carved out Arwal district, the Khet Mazdoor Sabha won an important victory this year. This is the village of the health minister of the RJD government. Initially, in June this year when the local labourers struck work demanding wage increase and reduction of working hours, the pro-Ranvir Sena employers tried to crush the struggle with the help of the police and started hiring labourers from outside. The labourers fought back with a show of great unity and determination and forced the labouerers from outside to stop work. A dharna was staged in Patna exposing the role of the minister and the Ranvir Sena-police nexus. Eventually the district administration was forced to intervene and concede most of the demands including increase in wages from 2.5 Kg to 3.5 Kg, reduction of working hours from 12 to 8, transfer of the guilty police constable and withdrawal of all cases foisted on the striking workers. We can also see a revival of land struggle against Maths and absentee landlords in Kako. Kaler and Ratni blocks. The struggle for Konikuti Math land in Kaler block has seen poor peasants belonging to Yadav caste get united against the illegal occupation of the Math land by a landlord from the same caste.
In Patna, following our impressive victories in the panchayat election in Dulhinbazar block, struggle was intensified to establish peasant control over the 28 acres of land lying with the Khapuri Math. The BPKS had seized this land in the early 1980s, but of late landlords backed by the Ranvir Sena as well as the local RJD MLA and the administration, have been trying hard to evict the peasants and stop all agricultural operation. On 16 August 2001, hundreds of peasants and agricultural labourers braved police lathis and firing by the Ranvir Sena to complete the work of paddy transplantation. A leading member of the Party District Committee and a mukhia were arrested and several people injured by the police. In Bara village of Naubatpur block, landlords belonging to the erstwhile Bhumi Sena and regrouping currently under the banner of the PWG unleashed severe terror and evicted 125 families from the village. The Khet Mazdoor Sabha launched a determined struggle on this issue and on 6 July 2002, a march was organised from Naubatpur to Bara. Armed men of the Ranvir Sena and PWG fired on the march but were bravely resisted by the people. An indefinite gherao of the block office followed and after two weeks the evicted families returned to the village following an agreement with the administration.
8. In Jharkhand, beyond our old pockets of peasant struggle in the Palamau-Garwah-Latehar belt, the Dumka-Jamtara belt of Santhal Pargana has emerged as a centre of intense agrarian struggles in recent times. In 1998, agrarian labourers/poor peasants of 13 pachayats in Kundahit PS of Dumka district waged a fortnight-long strike strike on the demand of minimum wages and better sharecropping terms. In 1999, this movement spread over another ten panchayats. Similar struggles broke out in Raneshwar block as well. As a result of this movement sharecroppers are now getting half of what they produce. In Kundahit a land seizure movement has also been successful. In this zone our work has now spread over 35 panchayats and around 3000-4000 people now get mobilised at the Party’s call.
In Uttar Pradesh, land srtruggle has acquired fresh momentum in the Lakhimpur-Pilibhit belt of Terai region. More than 100 displaced families of Sharda project area have been successfully rehabilitated in 300 acres of fallow land lying with the forest department. Defending the new settlement, known as Kranti Nagar, against constant attacks by the local land mafia-police-criminal nexus remains a major challenge. So far the rehabilitated families have been successful in retaining their control and beating back the enemy nexus. In Guthna Buzurg village of the district, struggle is on against attempts to evict allottees (pattedaars) from 104 acres of land. Recently when the local land mafia, which enjoys political patronage of the BSP, tried to forcibly harvest the standing crop of the land, women agricultural labourers offered heroic resistance. Several of them got injured and had to be hospitalised, but the women still remained firm. Other local women also joined in and burned effigies of Chief Minister Mayawati. Powerful protests were organised in the district headquarter and eventually the district administration had to intervene and uphold the legal rights of the threatened tenants and stop the land mafia from harvesting the crop. In Puranpur tehshil of Pilibhit disrict, our comrades have successfully frustrated attempts to evict the people settled in Rahul Nagar and 9 adjoining villages.
The eastern region districts have also emerged as a centre of growing agrarian unrest. In Chandouli district a militant struggle was launched against the labour-displacing application of harvester combine. On 5 December 1999 landlords attacked an anti-harvester mobilisation of the Khet Mazdoor Sabha at Bauri village and injured several activists. When agricultural labourers retaliated, the District President of the Samajwadi Party intervened on behalf of the landlords. There is strong resentment among agricultural labourers against the labour-displacing impact of harvester combines and they are rallying around the demand for stopping these machines till alternative employment is guaranteed. In Chakia tehshil of the district we succeeded in making some initial advances in land struggle against the illegal holdings of the Raja of Banaras. Following abject betrayal by the CPI(M) in 1998, our comrades captured the land held illegally by the Raja in Bairath farm and called upon the people to stop surrendering any share of crop and fight for patta rights. However we could not hold on to the gains in the face of the backlash that followed. We have to prepare our forces for the next round of battle. In another instance of land struggle in Chakia tehshil, 150 families were settled in cultivable government land in Rasia and it left a positive impact on the local BSP base.
The Party’s consistent political intervention against state repression and atrocities on dalits and adivasis has established some initial reputation for our organisation as the only reliable organisation for the rural poor in opposition to the arch-reactionary BJP and pro-Kulak parties like the SP and BSP. This has created good prospects for developing powerful pockets of agrarian struggles and establishing the Party on a bigger scale.
9. In East Godavari district of Andhra Pradesh, fierce land struggle is on centring around more than 80 acres of ceiling-surplus and bhudan land in Peddasankarlapude village located about 50 km away from Kakinada. The landlords, closely aligned with different TDP MLAs in the district have hired the services of a local mafia outfit operating under the banner of a self-styled CPI(ML) faction. In this district more than 3,000 acres of land have been captured and distributed during the last two decades. In Rayagada district of Orissa, intense land struggle is going on in Padampur and Ramanaguda blocks. In addition to 75 acres of land captured and cultivated since last year, another 60 acres of ceiling surplus land has been rescued from the illegal occupation of landlords well-connected to both the Congress and BJP. On several occasions, hundreds of tribal people have gheraoed the block office, police station and even court and jail. The secretary of our Rayagada district unit has been booked under several false cases and is currently in jail. Peasant struggle is also gathering memoentum in Kalahandi district.
In Tamil Nadu some initial success has been achieved in organising agricultural labourers. In August 2000, in about 45 villages of Thanjavur and Nagapattinam districts, women agricultural workers led by the Tamizhaga Vivasaya Thozhilar Sangam (Tamil Nadu Agricultural Labourers’ Union) struck work for days together to demand the legally stipulated minimum and equal wages. Though the strike succeeded in winning only a partial victory, the message spread far and wide and generated tremendous enthusiasm among women agricultural workers.
In North Dinajpur district of West Bengal, poor peasants and agricultural labourers belonging to various SC-ST communities wrested 82 bighas of ceiling-surplus land in Raiganj block from illegal control of local CPI(M) bigwigs. Hundreds of peasants led by our party and the peasant association had sucessfully repulsed the CPI(M)’s initial attacks to regain control over the land. Several activists, including a member of the Party’s West Bengal State Committee, were arrested in connection with this struggle.
Two weeks ago, agricultural labourers and landless peasants led by the Paschim Banga Krishi Majur Samiti and Paschim Banga Krishak Samiti (West Bengal Agricultural Labourers Association and WB Peasant Association’) successfully captured 240 bighas of riverbed land in Nakashipara P.S. in Nadia. The landless labourers who had been allotted this land twenty years ago could never gain control. Pro-CPI(M) kulaks kept the land under their control with the help of share-croppers and agricultural labourers under the party’s fold. Earlier in February 2001, the PBKMS had made an unsuccessful attempt and the leadership got arrested. This time around, the police and hirelings of the kulaks had to retreat before the militant mood of the struggling labourers and peasants.
In Sonitpur district of Assam, work is going on among agricultural labourers. The agricultural labourers’association has succeeded in compelling the block panchayats to pay wages at the officially stipulated rate.
In most other states our work among the rural poor has still not acquired stable and organised character. In Utaranchal, some primary efforts have been initiated in Almora region to highlight the need for land reforms suited to the specific conditions of the state.
10. The Sixth Party Congress had emphasised the task of organising agricultural labourers as an independent class force. Even though agricultural labourers and landless peasants have always formed the mainstay of the peasant movement organised by the Party, it is only recently that we have started organising agricultural labourers separately under the banner of agricultural labourer association. This was taken up as a special point of emphasis during the Strengthen-the-Party campaign conducted between April and October 2000. More than 3,00,000 members were recruited in Bihar during this campaign. State level organisations have since been built in Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal while district and regional level organisations are functioning in Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Chhattisgarh.
Apart from leading the spontaneous and localised struggles of agricultural labourers breaking out during busy seasons to clinch a wage hike or secure job guarantees in the face of increased mechanisation, the agricultural labourers’ associations have started launching campaigns on a larger scale to popularise the class demands and strengthen the class identity of the rural proletariat. State-level strike actions have been organised so far in Bihar and West Bengal. In Bihar, the agricultural labourers’ strike held in July this year was implemented in nearly 2000 villages and demonstrations were held in 134 blocks. Some 70,000 agricultural labourers joined this class action all over the state to demand implementation of the minimum wages act, enactment of welfare legislation at central and state levels, CBI inquiry into the PDS (public distribution system) scam in Bihar and mandatory inclusion of all families with an annual income of less than Rs. 20,000 in the BPL (below poverty line) list.
Earlier, a major campaign was conducted in the state on the issue of PDS scam demanding dismissal of the civil supplies minister and unconditional release of all arrested activists. Block level people’s courts were organised in 116 blocks in 20 districts in which nearly 75,000 agricultural labourers and red card holders (those who are legally entitled to subsidised supply of essential provisions but are often denied any facility in real life while the rich and influential corner all facilities).
In West Bengal a strike was organised in July 2000. Even though it was implemented only in 65 villages primarily in Nadia and Bardhaman districts, it helped generate considerable enthusiasm and also a sense of class solidarity and confidence. In the wake of the devastating floods in 2000, the PBKMS agitated for proper relief and rehabilitation and against the corruption prevalent in panchayats and the rural administration. A day’s strike was observed in Nadia, Bardhaman, Birbhum, Murshidabad and parts of Hooghly and North 24 Parganas districts.
On the agricultural labourers’ front, we should now move towards building an all-India organisation and a powerful campaign on the demand for a comprehensive central legislation for agricultural labourers. However, we must ensure that an all India organisation of agricultural labourers is based on an adequate membership foundation, let’s say, not less than a million. In fact, the Bihar organisation itself has got this kind of membership potential. In recruiting members we must not remain confined to our own base but reach out to every section of the class. Special attention should be paid to enrolling women agricultural labourers. To increase the scope for intervention on issues like minimum wages and other aspects of welfare, agricultural labourers’ organisations may also be registered as trade unions and affiliated to our central trade union organisation. But this must be understood as a purely organisational arrangement, agricultural labourers’ organisations cannot and must not be confined to any narrow framework of trade union legalities.
11. Apart from launching separate organisations for agricultural labourers, peasant associations have also been restructured in Bihar and West Bengal. The reorganised Bihar Pradesh Kisan Sabha held a state conference and organised campaigns on issues like procurement of food grains, irrigation and various inputs and infrastructural facilities. In West Bengal, the organisation conducted a campaign on the growing symptoms of agrarian crisis in the state and held a ‘krishak bachao’(save the peasantry) mobilisation in Kolkata. In Pilibhit district of Uttar Pradesh, the Kisan Sabha forced the local administration to open separate purchase centres to procure the crop from small and marginal farmers.
In Punjab and Rajasthan, our organisations intervened to the best of their abilities in the farmers’ movement. In Mansa and Bhathinda districts of Punjab, our peasant comrades waged a militant struggle under the banner of Bhartiya Kisan Union (Ekta) on issues like growing indebtedness and distress sale of foodgrains. They fought successfully for cancellation of debts to the tune of millions of rupees and blocked the railways for days to force the then Akali-BJP government to purchase the crop at an increased minimum support price. In May 2000, tens of thousands of farmers in Rajasthan marched to the State Assembly in Jaipur to oppose the privatisation of the state electricity board and hike in power tariff. The Rajasthan Kisan Sangathan carried out a sustained and vigorous campaign on this issue. More recently, the organisation has developed a powerful agitation in Jhunjhunu district on the question of drought relief.
To develop the Party’s initiative on the agrarian front and give an all-India thrust to our intervention in the new current of peasant movement, the Party reorganised the erstwhile coordination of peasant associations as an All India Kisan Sangharsh Samiti. The AIKSS organised a peasant conference at Faizabad in UP against the new agricultural policy in March 2001. This was followed by a ‘lutera bhagao, krishi bachao’ (stop this plunder, save agriculture) campaign in the course of which mass signatures were collected on a ‘freedom charter’ against the WTO. In September an impressive ‘freedom from debt’ conference was held at Mansa in Punjab and finally on November 9 a massive anti-WTO rally was held in Delhi to protest the launch of a new trade round at the Doha summit of WTO. The organisation also sent fact-finding teams to visit south Orissa in the wake of starvation deaths and Haryana following police repression on the farmers’ movement.
This all-India initiative can however only be sustained if peasant associations in different states function properly. Occasional all-India campaigns are no substitute for vibrant local initiatives round the year. Striking a proper balance between national coordination and all-India campaigns and decentralised initiative and local agitations remains crucial for ensuring real all-round growth of our peasant organisations.
12. Our review of the agrarian front clearly shows that on the whole the land question continues to remain the central question of the revolutionary peasant movement. Greater penetration of capital and technology and greater integration of Indian agriculture with the global capitalist economy will only increase and not lessen the importance of the land question. Just as globalisation in the industry and service sector is being accompanied by labour reforms, in the agrarian arena we can already see a clamour for changes in land use pattern and also in land relations. Defending the limited gains of land reforms and advancing the struggle for radical land reforms therefore shall remain our central task.
In Bihar, the character of landlordism is undergoing a slow but unmistakable change. In most parts of the state upper caste landlordism has given way to a still not very organised kulak lobby from among intermediate castes. This ascendant kulak lobby in Bihar and eastern UP displays a low-key response to the agrarian crisis even as it organises and sponsors private armies and criminal gangs to suppress the rural poor. In advancing the land struggle we, however, often have to face middle peasants on the foreground while the feudal-kulak elements remain in the background. We must therefore exercise sufficient caution and discretion to ensure that land struggle remains targeted against the main reactionary elements. Land struggle must be accompanied by extensive propaganda and combined with other initiatives on other agrarian issues. Similar caution also has to be exercised in wage struggle. While maintaining the unity and morale of the agricultural labourers we should not hesitate to make interim adjustments whenever necessary. This is a continual battle and all demands cannot be achieved at one stroke.
A complaint is often heard these days that many people who have benefited from land struggles are becoming passive and that their involvement in various struggles and political mobilisations is on the wane. Such a negative turn is generally sought to be rationalised by referring to the change in the class position of these persons. This is just a case of barking up the wrong tree. A landless peasant gaining a plot of land may at best turn into a poor or lower-middle peasant but that by no means should automatically render him passive, corrodes his class outlook and weakens his spirit as an activist. This passivity is nothing but an expression of economism which in turn breeds all kinds of bureaucratic or anarchist distortions. Just as a ‘pure’ economic struggle or the general framework of trade union movement can never break the barriers of bourgeois consciousness, no amount of militant land struggle can on its own guarantee a durable revolutionary consciousness or spirit.
The gains of any economic struggle are bound to turn counter-productive after a point unless such gains are politically consolidated under the conscious leadership of the Party. Winning and enforcing the people’s right to basic natural resources like land, water and forest is a fundamental question of people’s democracy. We must not allow any laxity in matters of formulation and enforcement of proper policies of land redistribution and collective democratic management of all resources under the Party’s close guidance.
13. The Agrarian Programme adopted in the Party’s Third Congress (1982) and the Policy Resolutions on Agrarian Question adopted in the Varanasi Congress (1997) have already clarified the Party’s position on the essential question of developing the proletarian agrarian strategy in opposition to the bourgeois strategy of reformed landlordism. Many issues may come to the foreground in the course of the movement and every issue that concerns the development of agriculture and especially the interests of the broad masses of agricultural labourers and poor and middle peasantry, is a legitimate issue of our peasant movement. Of course, we must learn to relate specific issues to the overall agrarian programme and take a dynamic view of the developing situation.
Periodic investigation and systematic study of the developing situation and basic agrarian conditions is central to a Marxist understanding of agrarian relations. In the absence of a solid Marxist approach, things will be left to spontaneity and our response will remain ad-hoc and empiricist. Comrades in West Bengal took a good initiative in this regard. While the State Committee conducted a survey covering nearly 4,500 households, the Kolkata chapter of IIMS revisited the panchayats on the basis of which a team commissioned by the State Government had earlier prepared a report. We now need to lay special emphasis on a thoroughgoing Marxist study to deepen our understanding of the agrarian conditions obtaining in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh. Otherwise our understanding is bound to be influenced by the dominant discourse in this region which is obsessed with caste, crime and communal violence to the utter neglect of the underlying agrarian reality.
People’s Resistance to Feudal-Kulak Violence
14. Our experience shows that agrarian struggles almost everywhere are confronted with systematic state repression and organised feudal-kulak violence. In the concrete conditions of Bihar where the caste-class division is very rigid and feudal remnants are particularly stubborn, this feudal-kulak violence often takes the shape of private armies perpetrating brutal massacres. Such armies can however no longer really be dismissed as just private armies – connivance of ruling parties and systematic backing of the police and administration have given a semi-official status to such formations.
The Ranvir Sena’s intricate political-operational nexus with the state and its ties with the BJP and sections of RJD have been common knowledge in Bihar. The recent formation of the so-called Jai Shri Ram Sena (the sena has since renamed itself as Shoshan Mukti Sena) in the Bihar-UP border region with the express purpose of combating the CPI(ML) is yet another evidence of the private army strategy in action. It is interesting to note that the formation of this new Sena has been publicly endorsed by a police official of a rank no less than the DGP of Bihar.
15. The revolutionary mobilisation of the rural poor must be advanced by resisting and defeating this state-sponsored network of feudal-kulak violence. The Varanasi Congress had emphasised a three-pronged strategy to combat the combined onslaught of feudal forces and the state: political initiative, movements on popular issues and popular resistance. It was also rightly stressed that the point is not just to smash this or that sena by some method or the other, but more importantly, to raise the level of political consciousness of the people, effect a change in the social and political balance of forces and ensure the broadest mobilisation of the people in the process. At the same time, to promote popular resistance, the Varanasi Congress had called for getting rid of the ‘three dependencies’: (i) dependence on sophisticated firearms, (ii) reliance on the administration and (iii) waiting for instructions from above. Above all, the Congress had called for improving our state of preparedness and higher level of organised resistance to deliver decisive blows to the enemy.
Thanks to this overall strategy of resistance, it has been possible to mount steady pressure on the Ranvir Sena even though its strike power is yet to be eroded sufficiently. The failure of the Ranvir Sena to weaken, let alone wipe out, the CPI(ML) despite repeated massacres, internal bickerings within the Sena and its anti-peasant activities have led to a significant thinning of its social support. The internal crisis of the Sena was perhaps best reflected in the surrender of its chief. At a time when the morale of the Sena has been low and the organised forces of the rural poor have started reclaiming the lost gains, the police once again came to the rescue of the Sena. In the recent incident in Kurmuri, the police openly sided with the Ranvir Sena men to launch a combined attack on the fighting people.
16. Close on the heels of the Varanasi Congress, the Ranvir Sena perpetrated the biggest ever massacre till date at Laxmanpur-Bathe village of Jehanabad district. Powerful protest mobilisations were immediately organised in the district and elsewhere in Bihar and also in Delhi. Some of the perpetrators and their accomplices were also killed in retaliatory action. The Bihar government was forced to appoint a commission to probe the political links of the Sena. In spite of its unprecedented scale and level of brutality, the Laxmanpur-Bathe massacre could not demoralise the masses or dampen the spirit of their assertion.
The Strengthen-the-Party campaign once again drew the Party’s attention to the crucial agenda of unleashing people’s resistance. The renewed emphasis on this aspect found its reflection in several instances of armed confrontation with the enemy. During the campaign period, Comrade Viswanath Ram, a brave hero of people’s resistance was killed by the police in Bhojpur. The Party gave a call to gherao the collectorate to protest his killing. Thousands of people gheraoed the collectorate on 30 August 2000 to demand action against the police. The administration tried to terrorise the people by unleashing indiscriminate fire that killed four protesters and injured many more. This has however only strengthened the people’s resolve to intensify mass resistance. In Jagdishpur village near Siwan-Gopalganj border, seven young comrades went down fighting against an armed criminal gang. Earlier, in Sujayatpur village of Buxar district, the masses had fought a pitched battle with the police-Ranvir Sena combine. In Patna, a key man of the Ranvir Sena was killed in mass resistance. But some other key elements of the Sena including its chief had a couple of narrow escapes.
The campaign also brought to the fore some major weaknesses and problems on the front of people’s resistance. The question of organising people’s resistance is often not seen as an integral part of the Party’s agenda. There is thus a danger of the task getting devalued in practice and the masses getting demoralised. As a result we find this paradoxical situation that while the level of arming has gone up, there is a serious erosion in terms of spirit and basic discipline bordering, at times, on near amateurism. Some unfortunate heavy losses could probably be avoided with better planning, coordination and discipline.
Strengthening the organised forces of people’s resistance is an urgent task facing the Party. In all those areas where we face armed offensive of the enemy, the Party must seriously take up this question and take all necessary measures to strengthen this key aspect of our movement.
17. In organising people’s resistance to reactionary violence, we also have to contend with the growing attacks on our Party by anarchist outfits like the PWG and MCC. Till a few years ago, the PWG had no presence in Bihar. It succeeded to manage an entry following the erstwhile Party Unity group’s decision to go in for a merger with the PWG. In the Jharkhand region, the PWG suffered heavy losses at the hands of MCC before the two groups came to some kind of cease-fire agreement. In Bihar, the PWG is present primarily in the Patna-Jehanabad belt and it has become a convenient banner for remnants of the erstwhile Bhoomi Sena and in some areas also for certain elements of the Ranvir Sena. Ironically, while it had entered Bihar with tall talks of wiping out the Ranvir Sena, over the last four years it has provided more examples of hobnobbing with the Sena than confronting it. The PWG’s guns have boomed only against our comrades. More than fifty of our leading activists have been killed by the PWG in Patna and Jehanabad districts. In one single incident in 2001, eight comrades were killed by the PWG in Shahwajpur village in Patna.
In Andhra, the PWG is not much active in our areas of work in the coastal region. Even then it has issued death warrants against our leaders in East Godavari and Srikakulam region. In Orissa too, it has been issuing similar threats to our leaders in Rayagada. In Jharkhand, several of our leading comrades in Palamu-Garwah-Latehar region have been killed by the PWG. More often than not, the PWG attacks on our leading comrades are instigated by our political rivals, especially the RJD. All its election boycott calls are nothing but a smokescreen to cover up its acts of political bankruptcy and betrayal.
Earlier, in Hazaribagh and Chatra districts of Jharkhand, we had similar experience with the MCC. In recent periods the MCC has also repeatedly attacked our organisation in Ranchi, Bokaro and Giridih districts. However, in Giridih district, our comrades have succeeded in frustrating their attacks with powerful mobilisation of the masses.
On our part we have always tried to avoid or minimise tension with the PWG because we consider it a diversion from our main thrust of anti-feudal and radical agrarian struggles and it gives the entire movement a bad name. But the PWG treats our patience and considered political judgement to be a sign of weakness and there is no let-up in its violent campaign against our Party. And in this it also does not hesitate to join hands with the enemies of the rural poor. While offering necessary resistance to defend our organisation, we must make it a point to isolate them and effectively expose their true colours among the masses and all friends of the democratic movement. q http://www.cpiml.org/pgs/polorgreport/8.htm
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