After the huge success of the Mumbai march of farmers from various parts of Maharashtra, the CPI(M)-backed All India Kisan Sabha (AIKS) is trying to replicate the agitation in Delhi, too.

A meeting of the central office-bearers of the AIKS, which was held on Monday, decided to support a long march to Delhi to demand a special session of Parliament to discuss the agrarian crisis in the country.

The date of the march will be decided later after consultations with various organisations.

“This unprecedented agrarian crisis is reflected in the lakhs of suicides of debt-ridden peasants; the thousands of deaths of children and women due to starvation and malnutrition; the abysmal state of rural education and public health; the massive increase in rural unemployment and landlessness; and the unheard-of rise in economic and social inequality in the country,” AIKS leaders Hannan Mollah and Ashok Dhawle said in a statement. Blaming the “neo-liberal policies” of successive dispensations for the plight of farmers, they said that the last four years had thoroughly exposed the Narendra Modi government as the most “anti-farmer, anti-worker, pro-corporate and pro-imperialist government” in Independent India.

“Along with this is its rabidly communal, casteist and divisive character,” they said. The AIKS leaders appealed to various sections of people to support the idea of a “Long March of the Dispossessed”.

Signature campaign

The Sabha has already announced a 10-crore signature campaign on the demands of the peasantry and a ‘Jail Bharo’ agitation by peasants and workers on August 9 (Quit India Day), along with an all-India Mazdoor-Kisan rally in Delhi on September 5.

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