THE All India Kisan Sabha and the All India Agricultural Workers Union, in a statement issued on December 22 have appealed the peasantry and agricultural workers to join in the protest at taluk headquarters all over the country on December 28-29, 2017, the 50th and the 51st day after the announcement of demonetisation.  AIKS and AIAWU activists in Kerala will join the Human Chain called by the Left and Democratic Front on December 29.  

The cash crunch imposed undemocratically on the peasants and rural labourers by the prime minister has thrown them in chaos and misery. Modi had promised to solve troubles within 50 days but like most of his promises it is likely to be broken.

Vegetable growers, plantations, fisheries, dairy, cooperative institutions, rural traders, MNREGA workers, brick kiln labourers, migrant workers, transport industry etc have been badly affected by the lack of money in market. Farmers are unable to pay wages, harvest the crops; buy seeds for planting, traders have no cash to procure produce. Weddings got postponed and many social functions were cancelled. Trade and industrial production got paralysed and GDP declined sharply.  

The government itself is disrupting the economy of India when the world capitalist system has been sinking in a systemic crisis. The open resentment expressed by chief ministers of Andhra Pradesh and Punjab expose fissures in the ruling alliance. This reckless action has created loss of trust on the government and the RBI.

Neither the parliament nor the cabinet was consulted regarding the impact on the economy and the lives of 130 crore people. The State machinery and the RBI were not equipped to handle the impact of withdrawing 86 percent of the currency. 57 orders contradicting each other were issued by the RBI and the government of India in 42 days. Even the developed countries like USA, UK, France and Germany with much less population and rich technological advances did not convert their financial system to ‘cashlessness’. Counterfeit currency and black money has been caught in the newly printed Rs 2000 notes, thus exposing the hollow claims of the prime minister and the finance minister.

The AIKS and AIAWU appeal all the mass and class organisations including trade unions, student-youth-women federations and social organisations all over the country to join hands in the days to come and build combined resistance against the authoritarian anti-peasant anti-worker actions of the Modi government.