NEARLY a year after the first Kisan Long March from March 6 to 12, 2018, the AIKS Maharashtra state council held at Nashik on February 4, 2019, took the major decision of launching a second massive Kisan Long March in defence of the rights of the peasantry. This long march, which will begin from Nashik on February 20, the martyrdom anniversary of Comrade Govind Pansare, will culminate in Mumbai on February 27, the martyrdom anniversary of Chandrashekhar Azad.

A DELEGATION comprising Jitendra Chaudhary MP, K K Ragesh MP and other leaders of the AIKS met Suresh Prabhu, union minister for commerce and industry on February 10. He assured immediate intervention on the pressing issues of coffee growers in the country. The minister conveyed that a meeting of officers of coffee board, ministry officials and leaders of the small coffee growers sub committee affiliated to AIKS will be convened at the earliest. Highly volatile world market is the most important factor that goes against the interests of small growers.

OVER 5,000 peasants from 23 districts of Maharashtra participated in the statewide Farmers’ Rights Convention organised by the All India Kisan Sabha (AIKS) Maharashtra state council at the prestigious Yashwantrao Chavan Auditorium, a stone’s throw away from the state assembly and the state secretariat, in the heart of south Mumbai, on November 12, 2018.

PRIME Minister Narendra Modi and the BJP had generated high hopes and got the support of farmers in 2014 elections by promising the implementation of the Swaminathan commission recommendation of fixing MSP according to the formula C2+50 percent. It has betrayed them yet again by announcing MSP for the Kharif crops based on A2+FL costs instead of the promised more comprehensive C2 costs. Also no steps have been taken to ensure assured procurement. Without assured procurement any such announcement is only notional and will not accrue to the cultivating peasantry.

THE central working committee of AIAWU met at Nasik (Maharashtra) on June 19-20. 32 comrades attended the meeting from Kerala, Telangana, Karnataka, Maharashtra, West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, Punjab and Haryana. The general secretary’s report had noted that the all-round attack on the rural cash economy, the hard hit farming sector, unemployment and the loss of jobs in agriculture, in construction as well as in small-scale rural businesses, is hurting the mass of the rural people and driving them to ruin and starvation.