AIKS opposes FDI in Agriculture, Animal Husbandry & Plantation
THE AIKS strongly opposes the decision of the Narendra Modi government to allow 100 percent Foreign Direct Investment in 15 sectors of the economy including agriculture, animal husbandry and plantations. In a statement issued on November 12, it said that this move in the long run will harm the sovereign rights of the country and make it subservient to world imperialism. This is a retrograde step that will bring more and more hardships and miseries to the working class and the peasantry all over the country while benefitting only certain affluent sections that will play the role of middlemen to facilitate huge profiteering to foreign corporate forces. This will further intensify the exploitation of the peasantry already facing severe distress including price volatility, indebtedness, massive farm suicides etc under neo-liberal reforms.
The government claims that it meant to liberalise and simplify the FDI policy so as to provide ease of doing business in the country leading to larger FDI inflows contributing to growth of investment, incomes and employment. However, the experience of Zimbabwe, Kenya, Namibia, South Africa, Guatemala, Argentina and Brazil should serve as an example to us as to the economic, political and environmental dangers of such a move. Unregulated flow of foreign capital will spell doom to the peasantry and agricultural workers and keep the domestic economy in doldrums.
That there was no discussion in the cabinet about such a decision that will have far reaching consequences underlines the authoritarian and dictatorial means of administration under Narendra Modi regime. The haste of the government is clear since the announcement came in the wake of the forthcoming winter session of the parliament.
AIKS strongly demands the union government to ensure foreign investors are kept out of agriculture, animal husbandry and plantation sectors. Otherwise AIKS along with likeminded peasant and agriculture worker organisations will build countrywide massive resistance movement to save peasantry and rural working class.