Dr Vijoo Krishnan, Joint Secretary of the All India Kisan Sabha, visited the office of the Foundation for Agrarian Studies on July 30, 2018.

He delivered a talk on the changing nature of agrarian protests in India in the current period. Peasant struggles have in the recent years been on the rise and the peasant movement has raised the demands of the peasantry consistently and in an organised manner, he said. There has been both a quantitative as well as a qualitative shift in terms of the increasing numbers of peasants who are being mobilised and the impact of such mobilisation. Such struggles have not been seen earlier in the quarter century of the implementation of neoliberal economic policies. The shift has to do with the consistent efforts of the All India Kisan Sabha (AIKS) to build independent struggles as well as broad “issue-based united struggles.”  The AIKS, Vijoo Krishnan said, has been organising the peasantry on the basis of their class, paying special emphasis on the landless, poor, and middle peasantry. The movement earlier took up issues specific to the marginalised classes in the countryside — small and marginal peasants, and landless workers. In addition to taking up basic class issues, the recent approach of building unity among various peasant organisations around some important issues has expanded the movement as well as the reach of AIKS. This change in strategy has also led to some cross-class linkages, while the organization independently continues to take up the basic class issues and also enlists support of broader sections for struggles on such issues. In addition, organisations of the most oppressed sections such as the Dalit and Adivasi people have also joined the cause for a united struggle.

Vijoo said that these struggles have always been against the neo-liberal regime and reactionary communal, casteist forces. These struggles existed even before the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) assumed power at the Centre, although they have certainly gained momentum after 2014. Farmers’ protests against the Land Acquisition Ordinance (2014), Vijoo said, were the first significant instance of broad issue-based unity emerging, and saw the coming together of different groups, even groups that have earlier been generally against the Left. He said that the Bill that was passed (Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act, 2013) as a result of many struggles and united effort was “not to our satisfaction, but still an improvement over the erstwhile Land Acquisition Act of 1894.” He pointed out that the Land Acquisition Ordinance brought by the Narendra Modi-led BJP Government was draconian and did away with even the limited safeguards offered by the 2013 Act.

Referring to the issue of farmers’ support to BJP in the general elections in 2014, Vijoo pointed out that the tall promises made by the BJP in its 2014 election manifesto – doubling farm incomes, expansion of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS), farm pension schemes, designing an agricultural price policy as per the recommendations of the National Commission of Farmers headed by M. S. Swaminathan — raised the hopes of the peasantry. These hopes translated into votes for the BJP.

Within no time, however, disillusionment began to settle in, as it became increasingly clear that all such promises were just election gimmicks. The agrarian crisis resulting from rising costs of cultivation (due to persistent increases in input prices) on the one hand, and stagnant agricultural output prices on the other, which began under the Congress, has worsened in the last few years of the BJP rule. The falling rate of real farm incomes has further intensified. He highlighted many instances where the current government has actually gone back on its promises. Product prices have not seen any significant increase and procurement is at an all-time low. There is a deliberate policy to discourage States from providing higher support prices. The allocation of funds for MGNREGS has seen a steady decline, even in States like Tripura, where the performance of the scheme was phenomenal when the State government led by the Communist Party of India (Marxist) was in office. Crop insurance programmes have become yet another means of facilitating large profits for some companies, while the cultivators, particularly the small and the marginal farmers, have received little benefit from them.

The AIKS Joint Secretary said that such policy measures have led to an increase in farmer suicides in the countryside, and now, he says, there is an effort to mask the data pertaining to farm suicides through various means. He said that studies by AIKS point to an increase in the number of suicides. In fact, he said, it was the first time that even cultivators of food crops, like rice cultivators in West Bengal, were being driven to take the extreme step.

It is in this context of growing agrarian distress that the AIKS has taken up the task of shaping united struggles on various issues. Vijoo said that one of the most serious issues that the AIKS had identified for unifying peasants very early into the term of the BJP Government has been the potential dispossession of peasants because of the Land Acquisition Ordinance that was brought by the Narendra Modi led government. The Ordinance did away with even the limited safeguards that were present in the Act of 2013, such as the mandatory social impact assessment, stringent clauses on farmers’ consent, safeguards on food security, etc. There was also no mechanism to ensure accountability and transparency in the use and utilisation of the land being acquired.

The AIKS tried to build a movement on this issue under the banner of the “Bhoomi Adhikar Andolan” (Movement for Land Rights). Vijoo spoke about the difficulties faced in mobilising farmers around this issue. When Bhoomi Adhikar Andolan began organising peasants against indiscriminate land acquisition and the dispossession of small and marginal farmers, many rich farmers walked out, since they were interested only in the demand for higher compensation and not necessarily in preventing the acquisition of land. Eventually BAA managed to gather support from enough peasants and successfully build solidarity across various groups. The demands of this movement also included zameen wapsi, or return of land to farmers if it remains unutilised even after 5 years of its acquisition.

Vijoo then spoke about the Jan Ekta Jan Adhikar Andolan (Movement for People’s Unity and People’s Rights), in which AIKS plays a significant role. It is also another instance of the same strategy of “issue-based united struggles.” This movement is a unity against caste and communal oppression as well as against neo-liberalism. He spoke of the support received from many mass- and class-based groups that are consistently protesting against the growing communal attacks under the current ruling dispensation. The farming community has also been affected by many such measures, such as the attacks by vigilante cow protection groups called Gaurakshaks, restrictions on cattle trade and attacks against Muslim as well as Dalit farmers engaged in dairy farming, cattle rearing, the leather industry or the disposal of dead cattle. Such steps, Vijoo said, have in reality taken farmers’ cattle wealth away from them. Stray cattle have now become a menace and, in particular, a threat to standing crops. The increased pressure from dumping by countries like Australia and New Zealand is also affecting milk cooperatives and the milk economy of India. Free Trade Agreements are also seeking duty free access to Indian markets, a measure that will destroy the dairy sector in India. Vijoo said that communal attacks are aimed at destroying the unity of the peasantry and toiling masses and that the agrarian question cannot be addressed without countering such tendencies. Over the course of struggles and strategy of issue-based unity it has been successful in gathering more momentum and support against gaurakshaks and attacks on cattle economy as well as divisive forces, he said.

Vijoo said that a third level of “issue-based united struggle” was formed after the farmers’ protest at Mandsaur, Madhya Pradesh, where six farmers were shot dead by the BJP Government, and the agitation by farmers from Tamil Nadu in Delhi. These protests were an outcome of the policy of demonetisation, which had a devastating impact on the farm economy of the country. The issue-based platform of over 200 farmers’ organizations, called All India Kisan Sangharsh Coordination Committee (AIKSCC), thereafter took up the task of organising farmers around the demands “freedom from debt” and “assured remunerative prices.” Vijoo spoke in some detail about the “mahapadav” in Rajasthan, and the “kisan long march” from Nashik to Mumbai, which were two instances of struggles that caught the imagination of the peasantry and were independently carried out by the AIKS and inspired the peasantry across India. He said that the issues that these struggles are successfully raising pertain to basic questions of livelihood of farmers. For example, “one of the main demands in the Rajasthan protests was against high electricity tariffs, along with the issue of procurement prices.” “It is only by enlisting the support of the cultivating masses by raising these day-to-day issues that these struggles can eventually take up more fundamental, class based, issues.”

He said:

Land is, of course, the central question, but often that does not immediately strike a chord with the peasantry as it is seen as an unachievable demand. Instead, they relate more easily to basic demands on access to water, electricity, food, decent housing, etc. Enlisting them in struggles on such demands perceived as achievable is indispensable if they are to be mobilized for struggles on more basic class issues. The kisan long march successfully managed to enlist the peasantry not just on their immediate demands but also on basic class issues like land and forest rights.

While the struggle for land continues, Vijoo said, as part of the movement of the Bhoomi Adhikar Andolan, these more day-to-day demands are being raised to shape an united struggle under the AIKSCC. Independently the Kisan Sabha is also effectively intervening on these issues he said.

Vijoo concluded his talk with a description of some of the programmes the AIKS has planned for the near future.

The talk was followed by an interesting round of discussion, which unfortunately had to be cut short for lack of time. We eagerly await another round of discussion with the young Kisan Sabha leader.