THE Samyukta Kisan Morcha (SKM) has given a call for a massive peaceful march to parliament on foot from the various borders of Delhi in the month of May. Along with farmers, workers and agricultural labourers, women, dalits, adivasis, bahujans, unemployed youth and students will take part in this parliament march. The date will be announced later.

Before that, a call has been given for the following actions, most of them nationwide.

On April 10-11, farmers from the Delhi borders will block the KMP expressway for 24 hours.

On April 13, the festival of Baisakhi, which also happens to be the Jallianwala Bagh day in 1919, when under British orders well over 1000 of our countrymen were killed in firing at Amritsar, will be suitably observed all over the country.

On April 14, the birth anniversary of Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar, will be observed all over the country as Save Constitution Day through various programmes.

On May 1, which is the International Labour Day, all programmes at the Delhi borders and all over the country, will be dedicated to furthering worker peasant unity.

It is significant that all the calls given by the SKM during the last four and a half months of the farmers’ agitation have coincided with important milestones of the freedom struggle, of various peasant struggles, of the social reform movement, or around working people’s unity. They have thus sharply demarcated

themselves from the RSS-BJP, which has never been a part of any of these struggles, but has in fact opposed them at every step. These calls, which have been widely observed, have thus helped to raise the socio-political consciousness of the peasantry.

Last week on April 5, as per the SKM call, thousands of farmers gheraoed several offices and godowns of the Food Corporation of India (FCI) in different parts of the country, as part of the FCI Bachao Divas, to oppose the government of India’s attempts to dismantle both the PDS food distribution and the MSP procurement. The AIKS sent a detailed memorandum to the prime minister highlighting and opposing the related policy issues, and released it to the media.

BJP AND ITS ALLIES
ON THE DEFENSIVE
Some other events took place last week which threw the BJP and its allies on the defensive.

On April 1, thousands of farmers from Haryana peacefully blocked the Hisar airport and the highway leading to it. They prevented deputy chief minister Dushyant Chautala of the JJP from coming out of the airport for over two hours. Eventually he was forced to fly a distance of just eight kilometres by helicopter to reach the Haryana Agricultural University.

Two days later on April 3, chief minister Manohar Lal Khattar of the BJP faced equally massive protests by farmers at Rohtak where he went to attend a programme. The police resorted to a savage lathi charge in which an old farmer, along with others, was seriously injured.

Immediately, on April 3 and 4, thousands of farmers blocked several highways and roads in Jind, Hisar and Rohtak districts to condemn the lathi charge on farmers at Rohtak. The BJP-JJP rulers thus got a good taste of the social boycott of those forces who support anti-farmer laws.

On April 2, the car of BKU leader Rakesh Tikait was attacked by BJP goons near Alwar in Rajasthan. Tikait was attending a series of kisan mahapanchayats there. There was an immediate reaction in states like Uttar Pradesh, Haryana and Rajasthan, where thousands of farmers held large and angry demonstrations to condemn this cowardly attack.

A Mitti (soil) Satyagraha led jointly by the NAPM along with several other organisations began from various centres in the country on March 12, the day when Mahatma Gandhi began the Dandi march in 1930 from the Sabarmati Ashram in Ahmedabad. It ended on April 6 at Dandi in Navsari, where Mahatma Gandhi conducted the Salt Satyagraha against the British rulers.

Traversing hundreds of villages in several states, and carrying soil from various historical spots, the Mitti Satyagraha yatra was welcomed by thousands of people on the way. As expected, it faced numerous obstacles in BJP-RSS-ruled Gujarat. It was welcomed at the Shahjahanpur border on April 5 and then at the Tikri, Singhu and Ghazipur borders on April 5/6. The soil from all over the country will be dedicated to the martyrs of the farmers’ struggle. The number of martyrs has now crossed 350. It has been decided to build Martyrs’ memorials on the borders.

Finally, how farmers all over the country are being looted by the government and by the system once again came out glaringly through figures released last week. It was officially reported that the total pending dues from sugar mills to sugarcane farmers in India have crossed Rs 22,900 crore for the current crushing season that began in October 2020. Of this astronomical amount, nearly 60 per cent, i.e., Rs 13,600 crore worth of dues to sugarcane farmers are pending in one state alone. And that state is Uttar Pradesh, ruled by the BJP-RSS!