THE AIKS Maharashtra state council organised the first-ever women farmers' state convention at the Hall named after Comrade Godavari Parulekar in the Comrade Narendra Malusare Complex in Nashik city on December 26, 2024. A total of 515 delegates (443 women and 72 men) from 15 districts took part enthusiastically.

The largest mobilisation of peasant women was from the districts of Thane-Palghar in the Konkan region (155), and Ahmednagar (109) and Nashik (93) in the North Maharashtra region. The districts of Pune, Solapur, Sangli, Satara, and Kolhapur in Western Maharashtra; Yavatmal, Amravati and Buldana in Vidarbha; Beed, Parbhani and Aurangabad in Marathwada; and Raigad in Konkan were also represented.

After the flag hoisting, AIKS state president Umesh Deshmukh welcomed the participants and said the AIKS would redouble its efforts to bring the issues of peasant women to the centre stage, and would fight for ensuring justice to them.

AIKS state general secretary Ajit Nawale explained the objective of the convention. He said that the worst impact of the agrarian crisis was borne by peasant women. The National Commission on Farmers headed by Dr M S Swaminathan had made several seminal recommendations about peasant women. None of them were implemented. This convention is being held so that the AIKS will initiate struggles for the rights of peasant women. A charter of rights and demands of peasant women will be adopted, and taken down to the districts, tehsils and villages to organise peasant women and their struggles around this charter.    

It was an all-women dais, with a four-member presidium comprising Madhuri Deshmukh, Sunita Shingda, Suman Virnak and Anita Khunkar conducting the proceedings.

The convention was inaugurated by AIDWA general secretary Mariam Dhawale. While taking up general peasant demands against the grave agrarian crisis and the policies of the BJP governments which are intensifying that crisis, she called for launching struggles to ensure that peasant women, and in fact all women, get an equal right over ownership of their land, house and other property. While women do much greater work in the fields and in the home, our feudal system based on the Manusmriti ensures that their name is nowhere there in property matters. Even their own children do not bear their name. The principle of equal pay for equal work is universally and blatantly violated in the case of women agricultural workers. The massive amount of ‘invisible’ work that women do within and outside the home is never recognised. Violence and atrocities against women, including those on the basis of caste and religion, are sharply increasing in the last ten years of the Modi Raj in both rural and urban areas of the country. In the background of all these serious challenges, she congratulated the AIKS for its initiative of holding this peasant women’s convention, and pledged the full support and co-operation of the AIDWA to its follow-up struggles.     

Seema Kulkarni of the Mahila Kisan Adhikar Manch (Makaam) addressed the gathering. She placed the shocking injustice of the fact that while the share of women’s labour in the fields was 80 per cent, the amount of land in the names of women was only 14 per cent. That is why women are generally not recognised as farmers at all. That has a host of adverse implications, which we are all aware of. She called for intensifying the struggle to correct this injustice and force the government to take policies to recognise peasant women as farmers.

AIKS state council member Kavita Ware placed the 17-point charter of demands and stressed the need to popularise this charter far and wide.  

21 women delegates of the AIKS, including some representing the CITU, AIDWA, AIAWU, SFI and DYFI, spoke on the charter of demands, making important suggestions. Some of the prominent participants in the discussion were Lahani Dauda, Hemlata Patil, Suvarna Gangurde, Sangeeta Salve, Nirmala Maange, Hirabai Ghonge, Nishad Shaikh, Manisha Ballyal, Pranita Udmale, Rohini Nawale, and others. Many other women wanted to speak, but could not do so due to paucity of time.

The convention was greeted by CITU vice president D L Karad, CPI(M)'s newly re-elected MLA from Dahanu Vinod Nikole, CITU working women leaders Shubha Shamim and Anandi Avaghade, AIDWA state president Naseema Shaikh, DYFI state secretary Datta Chavan, and SFI state president Somnath Nirmal. They spoke on the burning issues of other sections of working women, like Anganwadi, Asha, Mid-day Meal scheme workers, agricultural workers, and also young women and girl students. All these sections of women were being hit by pro-corporate government policies, and united struggles were the need of the hour.   

The concluding speech was by AIKS president Ashok Dhawale. He recalled the glorious role of thousands of peasant women in the earlier iconic struggles led by the AIKS, like those of Telangana, Tebhaga, Punnapra Vayalar, Gana Mukti Parishad, Surma Valley, and others. He hailed the pioneering Warli Adivasi Revolt in Maharashtra for liberation that was led by the legendary Godavari Parulekar, the only woman president in the history of the AIKS so far. He said that the AIKS must and would take up the burning issues of peasant women in all seriousness in the days ahead. The struggle on these issues would have to be three-fold – the first against the anti-farmer, anti-people and pro-corporate policies of the BJP government, the second for equal rights of peasant women in all spheres including land and property ownership, and the third against the RSS-BJP attempts to divide society on the basis of religion and caste. He declared that a booklet on this convention would soon be published, the charter of peasant women’s rights and demands would be popularised across rural Maharashtra, district level conventions of women farmers would be held, and struggles on the issues highlighted in the charter would be taken up.

After the vote of thanks by AIKS state vice presidents Kisan Gujar and Sunil Malusare, the convention ended amidst resounding slogans and great enthusiasm.

Charter of Demands

1. In order to ensure that women farmers and farmers’ families get a remunerative price for the labour that they put in, combat the grave nationwide agrarian crisis. For this, reverse the policies of allowing corporate loot that are responsible for this agrarian crisis. Reduce the cost of production through various measures. Give a legal guarantee of MSP at one and a half times the comprehensive cost of production. Give adequate compensation for agricultural produce destroyed due to natural calamities.

2. Give women an equal share of ownership of agricultural land, house, and other property. This must apply also to land which is not in the farmers’ name, but which is in their possession. For ensuring all this, make the necessary changes in the laws.

3. Women working in the fields must have a share and rights in income and wages that is equal to that of men. There must be equal wages for equal work in MNREGA and other types of labour. Stop the loot of women’s labour through unequal wages and forced free labour.

4. Women must have the right to health, nutrition, education, employment, water reached to home, cheap fuel, and toilet in each house.

5. Promote the development of technology and agricultural implements through special policies, research, training and efforts to ensure that women’s labour in agriculture and allied activities becomes less and more bearable.

6. Liberate women and Self-Help Groups from the debt trap of Micro Finance Institutions.

7. Women in farmer suicide-affected families must be given assistance with a guarantee of income, the benefit of various welfare schemes, and an immediate minimum help of Rs 5 lakh.

8. Ensure effective implementation of the laws against atrocities on women. Take concrete measures to ensure a safe atmosphere for women.

9. Form a separate department for ensuring the assistance to, and rights and empowerment of, single women.

10. Formulate and implement a basic policy for de-addiction, liberation from liquor and other vices.

11. Take firm steps to counter evils like dowry, sex selective abortion, child marriage, superstition, communalism and casteism. Adopt a policy to inculcate gender equality, scientific outlook, and rational thought.

12. Adopt an agricultural policy, trade policy, and environment-friendly crop pattern which gives priority to food security, and takes steps to end all kinds of malnutrition.

13. Give a minimum of Rs 5,000 per month as old age pension to all women agricultural workers and poor and middle peasant women.

14. Increase the social assistance to Rs 5000 per month for widows, deserted, old, destitute, and differently abled women. Remove the condition of excluding the above beneficiary sections from the benefits of the ‘laadli behana’ scheme.

15. Make permanent the various schemes giving basic services like health, nutrition, and education to the rural sections. Give the status, wage structure and social security benefits of government employees to scheme workers like Anganwadi, Asha, Midday Meal workers.

16. Protect women’s traditional knowledge, skills, and ownership over natural resources from corporate loot.

17. Protect the Constitutional rights of women.