AFTER its successful seventh all India conference at Trichy in Tamil Nadu, the All India Agricultural Workers Union now prepares for its eighth all India conference at Warangal in Telengana from July 30-August 2, 2014. It is significant that this conference is taking place in a region where one of the most inspiring chapters of how independent India was unified and people laid down their lives in thousands under the red flag to defeat feudal rulers like the Nizam of Hyderabad, the Nawab of Junagadh and the Maharajas of Tripura, Jammu and Kashmir and Travancore, to integrate these states into the Indian Union that would declare itself the secular, democratic Republic that we are part of today. Indeed it was as a result of the determined struggles of the peasants and agricultural labourers that India got the first of its legislations on land reforms with the abolition of colonial intermediaries as well as the flowering of petty production by free citizens of India, liberated from slavery and bondage both of foreign rulers and local landlords. We are the proud inheritors of what these hard working and struggling millions achieved. In 1947-48, India was recovering from one of the worst famines it has experienced. Thousands died while inflation, corruption and starvation flourished. Profiteers made millions and millions died of hunger. It is thanks to our hard working and sacrificing peasants and agricultural labourers that we have been able to cross 264 million tones of grain in 2013-14, from a mere 50.82 million tones in 1950-51. In a year of drought we are grateful to the working peasants and agricultural labourers for having provided so well for us that any scarcity that occurs will be a result of the criminal activities of hoarders and the refusal of the government to take more than cosmetic measures to control the price-rise. It is fortunate that our eighth all India conference is taking place at a time when the hard working producers of our agricultural wealth will have to organise themselves and launch struggles to get their due from our common food basket. MNREGA UNDER THREAT This will require organised struggles to ensure that the victories we have won like the passage of the MNREGA in 2006 and its extension to the country as a whole as well as the Food Security and Forest Rights Act, are not squandered away by those who see them as threat to their greed for accumulating wealth, exploiting and dispossessing the mass of rural people and leaving them to quit their homes in distress or die. The conference will require informed discussions on the loopholes being used by the corrupt and the criminal to deny the vast mass of Indian people who live in the rural areas the right to a fair share of the fruits of their labour. The UPA government, while claiming credit for this law, did everything possible to make it ineffective. It reduced the allocation for the law from 0.5% of the GDP in 2008-09 to 0.4% in 2012-13. At the same time it left large amounts unspent while people were going from pillar to post, suffering the horrors of joblessness, migrating to city slums and dying of hunger all over the country. In its callousness, while 22.11% of the allocated fund remained unspent in 2011-12 the figure rose to 32.82% in 2012-13. Moreover, since 2010-11 the number of job cards issued has stagnated at 1277.15 lakhs. The number of households that benefitted from this law was reduced from 549.47 lakhs in 2010-11 to 408.06 lakhs in 2013-14. Also the number of person days of employment has come down from 257 crores in 2010-11 to 218 crores in 2013-14. It is evident that the number of days per household have come down drastically as well. In fact, most states have failed to provide the 100 days work per year as promised in the law and very few have been paid unemployment relief. In 2013-14, payable unemployment relief was Rs 2923.80 crore of which nothing was paid. Out of the total outlay of Rs 33,000 crore approved for 2012-13, only Rs 25,894.03 had been released. No wonder crores of workers who have in desperation worked to build tanks, clean canals and improve the infrastructure in the rural areas have suffered even more without being paid for it. In fact, the best implementation of the law has been in Tripura, while some of the most inspiring struggles to implement this law effectively have been those of our union in Andhra Pradesh. In a wide range of states, like Maharashtra, Punjab, Haryana, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, have been conducting struggles that have helped rural labour get job cards, work, proper facilities for work and wages due to them. The tasks of ensuring unemployment relief and social audits to go into issues like corruption must also be taken up if this law is to operate as it should. This has become even more necessary today as the BJP-led NDA government has tried to reduce the importance of this law to a mere scheme by removing it from the Budgetary Head 2501(Anti Poverty Legislation) to 3601(Grants in Aid to the States). This will reduce the status of this law to earlier failed schemes like the Food for Work or Employment Assurance programmes. The struggle to save the first major legislation to benefit the rural poor cannot be ignored. It is clear that BJP chief ministers like those of Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh have been echoing views similar to those of the earlier Congress minister CP Joshi calling for the reduction of the law to a scheme means that the protection and enforcement of this law will have to be accomplished by mass struggles in the states in future. Similarly the failure to implement the Food Security Act by July 4 as required by the law passed by the last parliament also reflects the reluctance of the present government in implementing this important measure at a time when food inflation has moved into double figures once more and the shadow of a drought covers most of India. Not only does this legislation not restore the Universal PDS, there have been attempts to punish states paying their farmers more than the minimum support price to ensure consumption and also attempts to reduce procurement. So the struggle to get 35 Kg of grain to all families at not more than Rs 2 per Kg and other attempts to protect the existing PDS will be part of the discussions and struggles to come. INCREASING LANDLESSNESS There is likely to be a further decline in the number of our citizens who are linked to land. The number of the cultivators shrank from 127 million in 2001 to 118 million in 2011. This is the first time in our history that this has happened. The handing over of land taken from the hard working peasantry to property dealers and industrialists who have failed to utilise and made it unproductive will see more dispossession, if the provisions of easier land sales under the new Land Acquisition Act and government take overs to benefit private interests are to be seen in the context of recent budgetary declarations. This means that the already enormous figure of 46% landless in our rural areas will increase many times over. As a result, in the absence of credible employment schemes, the burden on land and society will increase. The only way to survive this attack of pauperisation heaped on the rural masses is to take over waste, common and undistributed surplus land and ensure a decent living for all. The proper implementation of the Forest Rights Act in favour of tribal people and traditional forest dwellers will go a long way in easing this burden. This too will form an important part of our discussions and future struggles. Another factor that cannot be ignored is how, not only are ever larger sections of the people being arbitrarily divided and marginalised, we are seeing increasing violence against women, who are already paid less than men generally, have no land rights in ancestral land and are subject to arbitrary honour killings, growing physical attacks and rapes. Then there are increasing attacks on dalits, seizure of their lands, trafficking of women and children and debt-bondage. In the recent budget too, they have been granted considerably less than their due in the sub plans for them as well as for the tribal people. This lack must be made up. It is clear that with a drive on for development under the control of corporate and private parties, arbitrary actions like that in the case of the Polavaram project, will increase over time, demanding our active support to those removed from their homes without proper rehabilitation. At the same time, the increase in the amount of indirect taxes coupled with massive concessions to attract investors are likely to result in a further price rise. This could also be compounded by the effect of drought, international oil prices rising and the NDA government’s propensity to help out its cronies, the Ambanis, Adanis and the like by evolving a policy very similar to that of Manmohan Singh and Chidambaram, which they have come to power by opposing. The BJP may have a majority in parliament but its vote share is barely 30%. So the anger of the people cannot be overridden easily without playing the divisive card. We should therefore defend the unity of the people and organize them in struggle. In this state of affairs, the conference will provide an important forum to discuss and seek resolutions to the pressing problems the vast masses of the rural poor are facing and are likely to face in the time to come. This conference will represent the views of nearly 53 lakh members from 13 states, over 2 lakhs more than our last conference, with a number of states increasing their membership by over 10% since last year, like Tamil Nadu, UP, Haryana, Rajasthan and Karnataka. Kerala leads with 22,06,250 members followed by Andhra Pradesh with 14,63,827, while Tripura, Punjab, Maharashtra, Bihar and UP are all above the one lakh mark. Around 770 delegates will attend. There will be 220 from Kerala, 165 from Andhra Pradesh, 65 each from Tamil Nadu and Tripura, 30 each from Punjab, Maharashtra, Bihar, UP and Karnataka, 15 each from Haryana, Rajasthan and Odisha, 5 each from West Bengal, Gujarat and MP and 2 from Manipur. This growing area of activity and struggle will find this conference a valuable basis for carrying forward the struggles of rural labour, ensuring that the victories we have gained in the last few years will be consolidated with even newer victories like passing a Comprehensive Central Legislation for Agricultural Labour and over the day-to-day problems faced by the rural poor, with greater confidence and strength.