THE All India Kisan Sabha, in a press statement issued on January 2, has condemned Prime Minister Narendra Modi for making a mockery of the plight of the peasantry and poor in his address on December 31, 2016. The peasantry which was reeling under an acute crisis were further pushed into distress by the demonetisation decision. They have suffered severe income losses as well as yield loss due to the decision. Sowing has been delayed and the area sown has fallen in wheat which is bound to have adverse impact on productivity.

THE All India Kisan Sabha, in a statement issued on December 10 has condemned the decision of the Narendra Modi led BJP government to scrap the import duty on wheat. The import duty which was 25 percent till September 2016 was reduced to 10 percent. This was, on December 8, totally done away with. The move is aimed to allow corporate companies and big traders of wheat to profiteer at the expense of farmers and is according to the diktats of the WTO and countries like the USA. AIKS demands immediate withdrawal of this move.

THE three week long Kisan Sangharsh Jatha, organised by the All India Kisan Sabha (AIKS), concluded in a huge public rally in New Delhi on November 24, 2016. The jatha originated from four different destinations in India – Jammu, Kolkata, Virudhunagar and Kanyakumari. Each jatha led by their leaders – Amra Ram, Hannan Mollah, Vijoo Krishnan and P Krishnaprasad respectively – travelled a cumulative distance of 25,000 km covering almost all regions of the country.

THE agrarian crisis in India is a reflection of the economic policies pursued by the Indian State and can be resolved only by reversing them altogether. The crisis has manifested in the forms of increasing landlessness, widespread indebtedness, massive peasant suicides and alarming distress migration from rural to urban regions. Between 1991 and 2011, around 1.5 crore farmers -- 2,035 per day -- have been forced to give up cultivation and look for other occupations in order to overcome their crisis of subsistence.

 Mollah said that the Modi-government has backtracked on his promises made earlier to the peasantry. Peasantry, being that section of the population whose production feeds the entire nation, is being compelled to resort to suicides and starvation deaths due to complete lack of apathy on the part of the government. This lackadaisical stand of the government can only be responded by a firm whip of mass movements.