IT undoubtedly was the most difficult task for the All India Kisan Sabha-challenging emotionally as well as organisationally. It required the Kisan Sabha activists to go down to the families in extreme distress, understand their suffering, stand in solidarity with them and mobilise them to be a part of the struggle against the neo-liberal economic policies and the insensitive state as well as central governments that had snatched their loved ones from them.

EIGHT organisations of kisans, agricultural workers and rural artisans, at a joint meeting on 21ST July, decided to organise a “Campaign Fortnight” from 16TH to 31ST August throughout the country on the issues being faced by them. Joint meetings of cadres, mass meetings, seminars, torchlight processions and other programmes will be organised at block, taluk and district levels to draw the attention of public in general against the anti-people policies of the governments.

THE city of Guwahati witnessed a massive convention against Land Acquisition Ordinance, on June 19. The spacious auditorium of the District Library was packed up to its capacity and many of the participants had to take their seats on the floor. More than a thousand delegates attended the convention which was inaugurated by Hannan Mollah, general secretary of the All India Kisan Sabha.

THE All India Kisan Sabha has condemned the BJP-led NDA government’s decision to exclude rubber farmers in Kerala and Tamilnadu from the subsidies they were entitled to for new planting and replanting. In a statement issued on June 15, it said that this move comes at a time when the rubber farmers are in an acute crisis due to fall in price of rubber. Farmers in Kerala alone are yet to be paid subsidy arrears of over Rs 30 crore for trees already planted. The Rubber Board’s own estimate recommends replanting on 2 lakh hectares in Kerala.

THOUSANDS of peasants forced a shutdown of traffic in district headquarters for hours in West Bengal protesting against the policies of the TMC government and the Land Acquisition Bill of the Modi government.Peasants in West Bengal are passing through an acute crisis for years now. They have been forced to go for distress sale of their produces, both rice and potato, for consecutive years. In the absence of public procurement, the peasants have sold paddy at much less price than their production cost.