Rural poor brothers and sisters,
Ruling parties of various hues come to us during every election, and take away our votes after promising a better future. It is the majority votes of India’s rural poor that forms governments, yet as soon as power is grabbed, the very same governments forget us and all our needs and aspirations. In this regard, it is difficult to find any distinction among all governments whether at the centre or in the states. It is as if betrayal is another name for governance.
A majority of the population living in rural India are cursed with landlessness. While land for cultivation is still a distant dream, even 10 cents of land for building a house is not made available to the poor. The sharecroppers are not even guaranteed minimal legal protection. It is not as if Central and State governments don’t have laws to work with, there is no dearth of reports either, yet governments have been running away from implementing land reforms in favour of the poor.
At the same time, governments are working overtime to displace tribal people, and poor peasants and appropriate an ever greater share of water, forests, minerals and fertile land for massive corporate loot and plunder.
We the landless and rural poor know that in every village and panchayat, even to day there are large tracts of land that are stolen and controlled by the landed gentry Think again, then why is the government running away from giving land to the poor?
Amidst the loud claims of Shining India and Bharat Nirman, poverty is steadily increasing. Governments’ own reports are forced to admit this fact. Everybody in this country knows who are poor. Agricultural labourers, other rural workers, artisans, small and marginal peasants, and urban unorganised workers and contractual workers are all poor without any exception. Yet governments continue to play games over poverty estimates and BPL lists. Isn’t this a most cruel joke on the poor?
Everywhere, state protected corruption in PDS deprives the poor of essential provisions for their families while PDS items sell in black markets and the poor are subjected to back-breaking food inflation. While pulses and vegetables have disappeared from the plates of the ‘common man’, many have slid into a state of starvation and semi starvation.
Governments shed crocodile tears over rising prices, but they shy away from implementing the minimum wage level of Rs. 200 a day. This is despite the recommendations of the Sixth Pay Commission and the Supreme Court instructions for minimum wage rate revision. They have mired NREGA in corruption and added Mahatma’s name as a veil, why can’t they at least double the provisions to at least 200 days of assured employment to at least 2 members of every family on minimum daily wages of Rs. 2 00?
During the last Lok Sabha elections, the Congress had promised to give us a Right to Food Act. No such Act is yet in sight. Why can’t they revise the BPL list and ensure at least 50 kgs of subsidised food grains to every BPL family every month?
The governments complain of lack of funds. Nothing could be a bigger lie. They give away tax exemptions worth billions of rupees in every budget. In this year’s budget they have given concessions worth 57 crore rupees per hour or almost Rs. one crore per minute to the rich. Even if one-fourth of the crores allocated as subsidies to the capitalists are spent in favour of the poor, the problems of food, employment and shelter of the poor can be resolved.
We need to understand this puzzle. India’s 86 crore poor are being fleeced relentlessly even as a rich minority is being pampered with lucrative packages. It is time we got organised and asserted ourselves on a countrywide scale. Let us make a beginning with a countrywide rural workers’ strike on July 7 and tell the rulers that they cannot get a way for long with their policies of lies and loot and repression.
Let us give an ultimatum to the ruling classes and their parties and governments. On the day of the strike on behalf of crores of rural workers living in lakhs of villages and panchayats across the country, let us raise our united voice of struggle. Come! Join this call by AIALA for the first ever All India Rural Workers’ Strike and make it a historic success.
All India Agricultural Labourers’ Association