ON March 24, 2026, the Jan Akrosh Rally in Delhi will become the united roar of India’s workers, peasants, agricultural workers, women, youth, students and oppressed, led by CPI(M) cadres from the Hindi heartland and across the country. It will be a culmination of the state level Jathas that are being organised in the north Indian states from Jammu & Kashmir to Jharkhand, building a tide of resistance in every district, tehsil and basti. These Jathas are not mere routine programmes; they are the Party’s conscious effort to convert scattered anger into organised class struggle against a regime that is dismantling hard-won rights and hollowing out our democracy.

The BJP-led union government has launched a multi-pronged attack on the Indian people – imposing anti-worker labour codes, destroying rural employment guarantee, handing over core sectors like power and agriculture to corporates, and subverting national sovereignty by entering into unequal trade deals with US imperialism. The March 24 rally at Ramlila Maidan will bring the battles against all such anti-people measures together in a single political confrontation. The state level Jathas in the run up to it, will function as mobile political schools and centres of agitation that expose the class character of every so-called ‘reform’ being pushed by the corporate-communal ruling nexus. Each and every Party member who becomes a part of this massive exercise must see themselves as an organiser, educator and agitator, taking the Party’s line of struggle to the masses. 

Scrapping MGNREGA: Theft of Rights, Assault on the Constitution 

MGNREGA became a reality in 2005 after the Left, specifically the CPI(M), was able to force the UPA government to recognise, albeit partially, Indians’ right to work. As a result, 100 days of work was guaranteed per rural household, in a demand-driven fashion. The responsibility of wages was squarely placed on the Centre, and it created a lifeline for crores of our citizens amidst agrarian distress, especially for women, Dalits and Adivasis.

The new VB-GRAMG Act, 2025, scraps the very character of MGNREGA; work is no longer driven by people’s demand but tied to ‘normative financial allocations’ decided in Delhi. States that are already squeezed of their rightful tax share are forced to shoulder 40 per cent of the burden. Powers of Panchayats are curtailed, and centralised digital control replaces democratic planning. This is not only class bias in favour of the rural rich who want cheap labour during peak agricultural seasons, it is also a direct attack on the federal character and the Directive Principles of the Indian Constitution. Therefore, our Jathas must explain how this ‘adhikar chori’ deepens unemployment, drives migration, and pushes the rural poor back into the clutches of the rural rich, particularly landlords and moneylenders.

Labour Codes: Institutionalising Hire-and-Fire, Criminalising Resistance 

The four Labour Codes are the most sweeping restructuring of labour law in independent India. It is not meant to protect workers but to secure corporate profits by demolishing protections built through a century of working class struggles. They consolidate 29 laws into four Codes, expand employers’ freedom to hire and fire, legalise arbitrary retrenchment and closure, dilute social security, and make unionisation and strikes practically illegal.

By raising the threshold for permission for retrenchment and closure from 100 to 300 workers, the floodgates to mass arbitrary layoffs without state approval has been opened. By excluding vast numbers of workers – contract, trainees, supervisors, those in units below revised thresholds – from the protection of labour laws, the working class has been further informalised and fragmented. By imposing harsh conditions for registration, giving the state arbitrary powers over unions, extending mandatory strike notice to all establishments, and criminalising ‘illegal’ strikes with heavy fines and imprisonment, trade unionism is sought to be ended. An effective impunity has been granted to violators of minimum wages and safety norms, by converting inspectors into ‘inspector-cum-facilitators’ and normalising self-certification by employers.

These Codes are class war from above, backed by domestic and foreign capital, to atomise workers, suppress wages and crush collective action. In the run up to March 24, CPI(M) cadres must link every closure, every contract worker’s plight, every workplace accident, to this deliberate legal architecture of exploitation. 

Seed Bill, Electricity Bill, HECI: Selling Farmers, People and Knowledge 

The new Seed Bill is an assault on India’s peasantry and the country’s seed sovereignty itself. It undermines farmers’ long-recognised right to save, exchange and re-use seeds, gives corporations control over seed registration and quality norms, and threatens small farmers with dependence on costly corporate seeds and contracts. Farmer organisations like AIKS have correctly identified it as a threat not only to livelihoods but also to national sovereignty over the food system.

The draft Electricity Amendment Bill 2025 is aimed at accelerating privatisation of generation and distribution, ending cross-subsidies, and paving the way for higher tariffs for domestic consumers and the withdrawal of subsidised power for farmers. Trade unions like the CITU and sectoral organisations have rightly warned that the Bill will weaken the public electricity sector, undermine universal right to electricity, and hand over a critical infrastructure to profit-driven private companies.

In higher education, the proposed Higher Education Commission of India (HECI) Bill is part of the broader Hindutva-corporate agenda to centralise control of education and further commercialise it. It will also pave way for the suppression of critical and democratic thought on campuses, like what we are seeing in JNU right now. The HECI will strip state run universities of autonomy, enable fee hikes and private ‘investment’ under NEP, and align curricula with communal, pro-market ideology. The fallout of such private investment was seen in the recent, much touted, AI Summit.

Our Jathas will serve as platforms to connect these sectoral attacks to people’s lived experiences; rising electricity bills, student fee hikes, the burden on peasant households, increasing farmer suicides and the silencing of dissenting voices in universities. 

Indo-US Trade Deal: Surrender of Sovereignty 

The Indo-US trade deal represents a blatant surrender of national sovereignty to US imperialism. By making sweeping concessions – agreeing to zero tariffs on US exports of fruits, cotton, tree nuts, soybean oil and other agricultural goods, the BJP government has undermined the livelihoods of lakhs of Indian peasants. The US dictated India’s economic and strategic choices, including decisions on oil purchases from Russia, with the government meekly falling in line. The trade deal was supposed to be a solution to work around the Trump Tariffs. However, despite the Supreme Court of the United States striking down those tariffs, the union government is now not willing to stand up and defend India’s sovereignty.

Also, the government refused to place full details of this deal before the Parliament, trampling upon democratic norms and treating the people with contempt. Therefore, the Jan Akrosh Jathas must expose these agreements as what they are; a desperate attempt by the ruling classes to integrate India more fully into imperialist value chains, at the cost of our workers, farmers and national self-reliance.

Foreign Policy: From Non-Alignment to Subservience to Complicity

Under Modi, India’s foreign policy has been recast to align our country openly with US imperialism and Zionist Israel, abandoning the legacy of anti-imperialist solidarity and support to Palestine. The Prime Minister’s visit to Israel, at a time when Israel continues its brutal war and genocide in Gaza – by way of ceasefire violations – and expands occupation in the West Bank, symbolises a complete alignment with US-Israeli strategic interests and a betrayal of India’s historic support to the Palestinian people. It is this same subservience that underlies the Indo-US trade deal.

India’s silence even in the face of grave provocations in West Asia, including after the assassination of Iran’s top most leader and most of its leadership, is a national shame. Any government with an independent foreign policy would have unequivocally condemned US-Israeli aggression and defended the sovereignty of nations in the region. Not too far back in history, India was open to procuring natural gas from Iran. Now, when oil prices soar amidst uncertainty in the region, India will certainly feel the pinch. Succumbing to US pressure and reducing our oil imports from Russia due to the lack of an independent foreign policy, will truly bite us in the back.

Across the Jathas, we must link the issues of jobs, prices and farmers’ distress with this dangerous foreign policy shift. Every concession to US capital, every defence purchase and every alignment with Zionist Israel ultimately translates into fewer resources for working people and greater vulnerability to imperialist blackmail.

Turn Jathas into a Red Tide 

The Jan Akrosh Jathas and the rally on March 24, are part of a wider political offensive to resist the BJP’s multi-pronged class, communal and authoritarian attacks. The February 12, general strike showed the readiness of the working class to fight, and peasant struggles across the country demonstrate that rural India too refuses to submit. Taking that energy forward, Ramlila Maidan must echo with the slogan that this anti-people, pro-corporate, pro-imperialist course of the BJP-led union government, will be put an end to. To that end, the Jan Akrosh Jathas must become the Indian people’s organised power; a disciplined, militant, red tide, determined to defend the rights of the people, our Constitution itself, and the sovereignty of the Indian Republic.