We the workers, peasants and agricultural workers of India are going to storm Delhi, the capital city of our great republic, in this 75th anniversary year of our independence from the British Imperialism, demanding pro-people policies to ensure basic right to food, health, education, employment and fair and remunerative prices for our produce and fair and living wages for our work. We are demanding a life of dignity, security, free of fear and hatred towards each other.
Instead of ensuring these bare minimum, the current BJP government controlled by the RSS is taking away whatever we have achieved through years of struggle and unity. Pain has become unbearable for the common people.
Prices of all essentials - rice, wheat, pulses, milk, curd, vegetables and so on are skyrocketing. For the first time in independent India, essential food items are being taxed through GST! Just a week ahead of the International Women’s Day and Holi the price of the cooking gas has again been hiked to Rs.1200. It was Rs. 423 in 2014! In this year of Adani’s ‘Amritkal’ Modi government has cut down the food subsidy by Rs. 90,000 crore in the budget! The budget allocation for the basic right to food schemes – anganwadi and school mid-day meal have also been cut down. Poverty, malnutrition and hunger have gripped the majority section of our people.
The unemployment is at an all-time high. According to CMIE report, unemployment among youth in the 20-24 years age group is a staggering 42%. Women are the worst victims of jobloss. Permanent jobs are vanishing. Even the government and public sector jobs are being made contractual and outsourced thus the entire governance system is being planned to be privatized. Through Agnipath scheme even the defence service is being contractorised. This will also take away the constitutional right of reservation in government jobs for dalits, tribals, OBCs and other downtrodden sections of society. Lakhs of micro, small and medium enterprises have closed, resulting in further loss of crores of jobs.
While the demand for work under MGNREGA was continuously increasing, the government has further drastically reduced allocations for it to the tune of Rs. 38,000 crore in last two years. Wages for work done to the tune of Rs 1498 crore are pending for several months in almost all the states. According to the government statistics itself, 1.47crore job seekers (around 20% of the total) were refused work. For those who are in work, the legal rights of eight-hour workday, minimum wages, social security and most important of all, the right to organise and collective bargaining are being denied. The four labour codes passed by the Modi Government are legally doing away with these rights. Under the Modi regime the employment relations are sought to be restructured in various ways to maximise profit. Contractorisation, large scale engagement of trainees and apprentices in the core production processes in both public and private sectors, keeping the huge emerging workforce of platform based workers virtually out of the purview of the labour laws etc are part of this.
Peasants are not getting the remunerative prices. Agriculture is becoming unsustainable for small and middle peasants with increasing input costs including fertilisers, water and electricity etc. Due to lack of institutional credit, the farmers are being trapped in indebtedness. The story of the farmer who has to travel 70 kms to sell 512 kg of onion @ Rs.1 per kg to get Rs. 2 as ‘net profit’ that too in a post-dated cheque narrates the plight of Indian farmer in this ‘Amritkal’. The land, produce, the market and the value chain all are sought to be totally handed over to the corporates through various avenues. Agricultural workers and poor peasants have to migrate to cities in search of work, as the work in agriculture has been declined drastically.
The forest and land rights of adivasis are taken away to hand over the land to corporates. Violence against women, dalits, adivasis, and minorities has reached to unprecedented levels.
All productive assets, the nation’s wealth – public sector undertakings, financial institutions, mines, defence production units, major ports, telecom towers, oil and natural gas pipelines, railways, highways, airports and airlines, electricity, steel, postal services - are being handed over to the big private corporates, domestic and foreign, through reckless privatisation. The National Monetisation Pipeline (NMP) is aimed at gifting-out our infrastructure built with public funds and sweats and bloods of public sector workers to the private corporates virtually free of cost, for making massive profits.
The unprecedented increase in suicide by daily wagers, 1,12,000 in just three years from 2019-2021 is the worst manifestation of the distress of the working people of our country. The disastrous situation in agriculture can more concretely be assessed from the fact that more than one lakh farmers have committed suicide in last 8 years. Workers and farmers of our country are being pushed towards a dead-end manifesting the breakdown of our societal structure.
This government has been extending bonanzas to the big monopoly companies, Ambani, Adani and the likes, by continuously lowering the corporate tax rates, abolishing wealth tax, declaring moratorium on payment of charges/taxes, on debt repayments etc. At the same time, it is imposing 18% tax to the people, even for withdrawing their own money from banks! The Super Rich have amassed wealth even during the pandemic. In an obscene display of inequalities in our country, the richest 1% corner more than 70% of the GDP and lowest 50% of people have less than 10%. The central government has written off loans worth a whopping Rs 10.72 lakh crore to its crony corporates in the last seven years.
The biggest ever financial fraud of independent India by Adani Group, as revealed by the Hindenburg report, has caused the public sector banks loss of thousands of crores- the SBI has lost nearly Rs.78000cr!. But till today, the Adani brothers who are under the direct protection of none other than the Prime Minister, were not even questioned by any government agency! The RSS is terming the exposure as a conspiracy against the country! Opposition party leaders, civil rights activists and journalists are being targeted and booked under false cases and jailed without bail.
RSS led majoritarian communal organisations and fringe elements are consciously propagating non issues and spreading venom and hatred among the people in the name of religion. They seek to dictate people’s lives – the dress they wear, the food they eat, people whom they can be friends with, whom they can or cannot marry. When the elections are near, they start unleashing violence and terror. BJP led state governments are into ‘buldozing’ people to create fear. Recently, two marginally poor farmers were burnt alive by the so called ‘cow vigilantes’ to create terror.
This in turn is leading to the rise in minority fundamentalism. Both these hues of communalism are being propagated to disrupt the class unity and have disastrous impact on the socio-economic lives of the people and on social harmony.
Despite all of these multi prong attacks, the workers, farmers and agricultural workers and all other sections of the people of our country have resisted this corporate communal government and its disastrous policies and also had many successful struggles during this period. The historic farmers’ struggle under the banner of the Samyukta Kisan Morcha (SKM) with the active support of the trade union movement could make the Modi government take back the notorious farm laws. Maharashtra electricity workers made the state BJP government withdraw its move to handover the electricity distribution to Adani, this year. Various joint struggles including the general strike and numerous sectoral struggles of the coal, port and dock, defence, bank, insurance, postal, telecom, electricity, transport, scheme workers and other sections of workers and the struggles of the farmers and agricultural workers in different states on the issues of minimum support price, wage, land, MGNREGA work, government procurement, etc show the determination of our people to fight for their rights.
Not only the workers, peasants and agricultural workers; the youth, students, women and many other sections are today fighting for jobs, for the right to food, education, health, housing, and social justice, protection of democratic rights and the secular character of our nation. These united struggles show the potential to carry forward the anti-imperialist, anti-corporate struggle to fulfil the dreams of those who fought for our country’s independence, to realise their vision of a free India.
For developing these struggles, CITU, AIKS and AIAWU have played a crucial role in building the unity of these basic producing classes, workers, peasants and agricultural workers. The Mazdoor Kisan Sangharsh Rally held on 5th September 2018 was the first one of its kind and was a milestone in advancing the slogan of worker-peasant unity which further advanced during the historic farmers’ struggle.
In this time of fierce attack on the livelihood of the people by this corporate communal ruling nexus, it is of utmost important for us to build the counter offensive. So, taking these struggles forward, advancing the unity of the toiling classes, upholding the legacy of the anti-imperialist freedom movement, we have decided to storm the capital city on 5th April 2023, during the budget session of Parliament in a show of strength and conviction of the people of our country, on the following demands of all sections of the people.
Demands
- Ensure Minimum wages @Rs26,000 pm and Pension @Rs10,000 to all workers including the scheme workers; No contractorisation of work; Scrap Agnipath Scheme
- Legally ensure MSP @ C2+50%for all farm produce with guaranteed procurement
- One time loan waiver by the central government to all poor and middle peasants and agricultural workers; pension to all of them above 60 years
- Scrapping of four Labour Codes and Electricity Amendment Bill 2022
- Job security and guarantee for all; Expand MGNREGA and increase workdays to 200 with minimum wages @Rs600 per day; Pay all pending wages; Enact a National Urban Employment Guarantee Act
- Stop Privatisation of PSUs and Public Services; Scrap National Monetisation Pipeline (NMP)
- Arrest Price Rise, Withdraw GST on food items and essentials; Reduce the central excise duty on petrol/diesel/kerosene/cooking gas substantially; Withdraw the increase in price of cooking gas forthwith
- Universalise the Public Distribution System (PDS) and expand its scope to include 14 essential items; Ensure food and income support to all Non tax payer families
- Stringent implementation of the Forest Rights Act (FRA); withdraw the amendments to Forest (Conservation) Act and Rules that allow the union government to permit clearance of a forest without even informing the residents.
- Stop repression of the marginalised sections and ensure social justice
- Ensure universal and quality Health and Education for all; Scrap New Education Policy (NEP) 2020
- Ensure Housing to all
- Tax the Super Rich; Enhance Corporate Tax; Introduce Wealth Tax
We call upon the workers, peasants and agricultural workers from all over the country to rise unitedly to fight for these demands and to work tirelessly to defeat the neo-liberal, communal and authoritarian regime of the BJP-RSS. We call upon all progressive, democratic and patriotic people of our country to extend support and solidarity to this action to Save the Nation and Save the People.
Come Let Us Storm Delhi on 5th April 2023!
Mazdoor Kisan Sangharsh Rally Zindabad!
CITU AIKS AIAWU
