{"id":75,"date":"2018-07-11T06:38:44","date_gmt":"2018-07-11T06:38:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/populareducation.in\/loksamvad\/?post_type=article&#038;p=75"},"modified":"2018-07-11T06:38:44","modified_gmt":"2018-07-11T06:38:44","slug":"a-long-march-of-the-dispossessed-to-delhi","status":"publish","type":"article","link":"http:\/\/populareducation.in\/loksamvad\/article\/a-long-march-of-the-dispossessed-to-delhi\/","title":{"rendered":"A Long March of the Dispossessed to Delhi"},"content":{"rendered":"<strong> Sainath\/PARI<\/strong>\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n\r\n<strong>India\u2019s agrarian crisis has gone beyond the agrarian.<\/strong>\r\n\r\nIt\u2019s a crisis of society. Maybe even a civilisational crisis, with perhaps the largest body of small farmers and labourers on Earth fighting to save their livelihoods. The agrarian crisis is no longer just a measure of loss of land. Nor only a measure of loss of human life, jobs or productivity. It is a measure of our own loss of humanity. Of the shrinking boundaries of our humaneness. That we have sat by and watched the deepening misery of the dispossessed, including the death by suicide of well over 300,000 farmers these past 20 years. While some \u2018leading economists\u2019 have mocked the enormous suffering around us, even denying the existence of a crisis.\r\n\r\nThe National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) has not published data on farmers\u2019 suicides for two years now. For some years before that, fraudulent data logged in by major states severely distorted the agency\u2019s estimates. For instance, Chhattisgarh and West Bengal and many others claimed \u2018zero suicides\u2019 by farmers in their states. In 2014, 12 states and six union territories claimed \u2018zero suicides\u2019 among their farmers. The 2014 and 2015 NCRB reports saw huge, shameless fiddles in the methodology \u2013 aimed at bringing down the numbers.\r\n\r\n<strong>And yet they keep rising.<\/strong>\r\n\r\nMeanwhile, protests by farmers and labourers are on the rise. Farmers have been shot dead, as in Madhya Pradesh. Derided or cheated in agreements, as in Maharashtra. And devastated by demonetisation, as in just about everywhere. Anger and pain are mounting in the countryside. And not just among farmers but amongst labourers who find the MNREGA being dismantled by design. Amongst fisherfolk, forest communities, artisans, exploited anganwadi workers. Amongst those who send their children to government schools, only to find the state itself killing its own schools. Also, small government employees and transport and public sector workers whose jobs are on the anvil.\r\n\r\n<strong>And the crisis of the rural is no longer confined to the rural. Studies suggest an absolute decline in employment in the country between 2013-14 and 2015-16.<\/strong>\r\n\r\nThe 2011 Census signalled perhaps the greatest distress-driven migrations we\u2019ve seen in independent India. And millions of poor fleeing the collapse of their livelihoods have moved out to other villages, rural towns, urban agglomerations, big cities \u2013 in search of jobs that are not there. Census 2011 logs nearly 15 million fewer farmers (\u2018main cultivators\u2019) than there were in 1991. And you now find many once-proud food-producers working as domestic servants. The poor are now up for exploitation by both urban and rural elites.\r\n\r\n<strong>The government tries its best not to listen. It\u2019s the same with the news media.<\/strong>\r\n\r\nWhen the media do skim over the issues, they mostly reduce them to demands for a \u2018loan waiver.\u2019 In recent days, they\u2019ve recognised the minimum support price (MSP) demand of farmers \u2013 the cost of production (CoP2) + 50 %. But the media don\u2019t challenge the government\u2019s claims of already having implemented this demand. Nor do they mention that the National Commission on Farmers (NCF; popularly known as the Swaminathan Commission) flagged a bunch of other, equally serious issues. Some of the NCF\u2019s reports have remained in parliament 12 years without discussion. Also the media, while denouncing loan waiver appeals, won\u2019t mention that corporates and businessmen account for the bulk of the non-performing assets drowning the banks.\r\n\r\nPerhaps the time has come for a very large, democratic protest, alongside a demand for parliament to hold a three-week or 21-day special session dedicated entirely to the crisis and related issues. A joint session of both houses.\r\n\r\nOn what principles would that session be based? The Indian constitution. Specifically, the most important of its Directive Principles of State Policy. That chapter speaks of a need to \u201cminimise the inequalities in income\u201d and \u201cendeavour to eliminate inequalities in status, facilities, opportunities\u2026.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 The principles call for \u201ca social order in which justice, social, economic and political, shall inform all the institutions of the national life.\u201d\r\n\r\nThe right to work, to education, to social security. The raising of the level of nutrition and of public health. The right to a better standard of living. Equal pay for equal work for men and women. Just and humane conditions of work. These are amongst the main principles. The Supreme Court has more than once said the Directive Principles are as important as our Fundamental Rights.\r\n\r\nAn agenda for the special session? Some suggestions that others concerned by the situation can amend or add to:\r\n\r\nThree days: Discussion of the Swaminathan Commission report \u2013 12 years overdue. It submitted five reports between December 2004 and October 2006 that cover a multitude of vital issues and not just MSP. Those include, to name a few: productivity, profitability, sustainability; technology and technology fatigue; dryland farming, price shocks and stabilisation \u2013 and much more. We also need to halt the privatisation of agricultural research and technology. And deal with impending ecological disaster.\r\n\r\nThree days: People\u2019s testimonies. Let victims of the crisis speak from the floor of Parliament\u2019s central hall and tell the nation what the crisis is about, what it has done to them and countless millions of others. And it\u2019s not just about farming. But how surging privatisation of health and education has devastated the rural poor, indeed all the poor. Health expenditure is either the fastest or second fastest growing component of rural family debt.\r\n\r\nThree days: Credit crisis. The unrelenting rise of indebtedness. This has been a huge driving factor in the suicide deaths of countless thousands of farmers, apart from devastating millions of others. Often it has meant loss of much or all of their land. Policies on institutional credit paved the way for the return of the moneylender.\r\n\r\nThree days: The country\u2019s mega water crisis. It\u2019s much greater than a drought. This government seems determined to push through privatisation of water in the name of \u2018rational pricing\u2019. We need the right to drinking water established as a fundamental human right \u2013 and the banning of privatisation of this life-giving resource in any sector. Ensuring social control and equal access, particularly to the landless.\r\n\r\nThree days: The rights of women farmers. The agrarian crisis cannot be resolved without engaging with the rights \u2013 including those of ownership \u2013 and problems of those who do the most work in the fields and farms. While in the Rajya Sabha, Prof. Swaminathan introduced the Women Farmers\u2019 Entitlements Bill, 2011 (lapsed in 2013) that could still provide a starting point for this debate.\r\n\r\nThree days: The rights of landless labourers, both women and men. With mounting distress migrations in many directions, this crisis is no longer just rural. Where it is, any public investment made in agriculture has to factor in their needs, their rights, their perspective.\r\n\r\nThree days: Debate on agriculture. What kind of farming do we want 20 years from now? One driven by corporate profit? Or by communities and families for whom it is the basis of their existence? There are also other forms of ownership and control in agriculture we need to press for \u2013 like the vigorous sangha krishi (group farming) efforts of Kerala\u2019s Kudumbashree movement. And we have to revive the unfinished agenda of land reform. For all of the above debates to be truly meaningful \u2013 and this is very important \u2013 every one of them must focus, too, on the rights of Adivasi and Dalit farmers and labourers.\r\n\r\nWhile no political party would openly oppose such a session, who will ensure it actually happens? The dispossessed themselves.\r\n\r\nIn March this year, 40,000 peasants and labourers marched for a week from Nashik to Mumbai making some of these very demands. An arrogant government in Mumbai dismissed the marchers as \u2018urban Maoists\u2019 with whom it would not talk. But caved in within hours of the multitude reaching Mumbai to encircle the state legislative assembly. That was the rural poor sorting out their government.\r\n\r\nThe highly disciplined marchers struck a rare chord in Mumbai. Not just the urban working class, but also the middle classes, even some from the upper middle classes, stepped out in sympathy.\r\n\r\nWe need to do this at the national level \u2013 scaled up 25 times over. A Long March of the Dispossessed \u2013 not just of farmers and labourers, but also others devastated by the crisis. And importantly, those not affected by it \u2013 but moved by the misery of fellow human beings. Those standing for justice and democracy. A march starting from everywhere in the country, converging on the capital. No Red Fort rallies, nor skulls at Jantar Mantar. That march should encircle parliament \u2013 compel it to hear, listen and act. Yes, they would Occupy Delhi.\r\n\r\nIt might take many months to get off the ground, a gargantuan logistical challenge. One that has to be met by the largest and widest coalition possible of farm, labour and other organisations. It will face great hostility from the rulers \u2013 and their media \u2013 who would seek to undermine it at every stage.\r\n\r\nIt can be done. Do not underestimate the poor \u2013 it is they, not the chattering classes, who keep democracy alive.\r\n\r\nIt would be one of the highest forms of democratic protest \u2013 a million human beings or more showing up to ensure their representatives perform. As a Bhagat Singh, if alive, might have said of them: they could make the deaf hear, the blind see and the dumb speak.\r\n\r\n<strong>(This article was originally published in the People\u2019s Archive of Rural India on April 23, 2018)<\/strong>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sainath\/PARI &nbsp; India\u2019s agrarian crisis has gone beyond the agrarian. It\u2019s a crisis of society. Maybe even a civilisational crisis, with perhaps the largest body of small farmers and labourers on Earth fighting to save their livelihoods. The agrarian crisis&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_uag_custom_page_level_css":"","_themeisle_gutenberg_block_has_review":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"issuem_issue":[4],"class_list":["post-75","article","type-article","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","issuem_issue-june-2018","entry","no-media"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.7 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>A Long March of the Dispossessed to Delhi - Lok Samvad<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"http:\/\/populareducation.in\/loksamvad\/article\/a-long-march-of-the-dispossessed-to-delhi\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"A Long March of the Dispossessed to Delhi - Lok Samvad\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Sainath\/PARI &nbsp; India\u2019s agrarian crisis has gone beyond the agrarian. 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