Essence of 'Peasant Parliaments'

See through the Essence of 'Peasant Parliaments'

Defeat the Ruling Class Tactics of Off-steaming the Peasant Unrest

Resolutely Uphold the Line of Building the Genuine Struggle-movement

 Against the Real Enemy.

                A new peasant platform under the banner of "All India Kisan Sangarsh Co-ordination Committee" has come into existence in the preceding year, 2017. It comprises almost 200 peasant organisations and NGOs from different states of the country. A peasant movement has been initiated from this platform over two of the peasant demands, viz. "fair and remunerative prices for their crops and complete freedom from debt”. In pursuit of these demands a "Peasant Mukti Yatra" was undertaken on June 6, starting from Mandsoure (M.P.) and culminating on July 18, in a "march and a meeting" in the Parliamentary street, New Delhi; and then, a "Kisan Mukti Sansad" was held on Novemeber 20, 2017 for two days, in which thousands of peasants from across the country took part. This "kisan Mukti Sansad" passed two bills with regard to the above mentioned demands. These bills were to be placed in parliament "as private member`s bills" by a member of Lok Sabha Raju Shetty of the Swabhimani Paksha and a member of Rajya Sabha K.K. Ragesh of the CPI (M) – (both of them are the part of this peasant platform); and then these bills were to be propagated by this platform thoughout the country.

                This country-wide Committee (of this platform) has drawn in several peasant organisations of Punjab, which had already been struggling for the peasant demands related to indebtness and other such issues. Five of these organisations have become a part of this Platform. These organisations comprehensively participated in both the gatherings held in Delhi. Participation in the activities of this country-wide Platform has assumed such a priority for these organisations, that going much beyond co-ordinating the calls from this platform with the ongoing struggles in the state, these organisations have gone to the extent of providing prominence to that participation by way of limiting, the ongoing struggles on important issues, to the level of formal calls and actions, instead of advancing these struggles in line with the huge participations and militant mood prevailing in these struggles, even though four of these organisations happen to be the part of the Joint-Platform leading these struggles.No doubt, these organisations formally remained part of the Joint-Platform and did participate in the activities of this platform, nevertheless, their preferance, in fact, has been to carry out the calls of the country-wide Platform and a deep interest, on their part, in the participation in such activities has got reflected. Role of the organisations upholding revolutionary orientation is especially regrettable as these organisations, instead of making energetic efforts for advancing the ongoing struggle in Punjab on militant lines, became the cause of slowing down the tempo of these struggles, after becoming part of the country-wide Platform. Undermining, thus, the importance of outstanding real struggle platform in Punjab and getting entangled into such brittle platforms which keep on being forged or broken according to the needs of parliamentary politics, is indeed, a negative phenomenon for the militant peasant movement in Punjab. Such a situation enjoins upon the pro-peasant and communist revolutionary forces the need realy to adjudge the policies, positions and the real nature of this platform and form their attitude accordingly. It becomes an important task of the sections upholding correct orientation, to come forward to save those sections from the infection of being entangled into it and try to bring them back to the revolutionary  path of struggles.

Class Political Character of the Leadership of the Committee

Right from the demands put forward by the committee upto its constitution and forms of struggle, everything is stained with the ruling class parliamentary politics and happens to blur and blunt the class divisions and differentiations rather than crystalizing the clear class stand-point.  Thus, this Platform is,in fact, more of a vehicle for the activities of the political parties of the opposition than those of the peasants struggling for their liberation from indebtedness. Its entire formation and positions make it clear that pining hopes on it for any effective and militant peasants' struggles would be sheer philistenism. This platform would, actually play the role of dampening mood of struggling peasant masses, warding off the class-enemies from the brunt of this mood and appending these struggles to the tactical moves of parliamentary politics and consequently, making them dependent on this politics. In order to prove the point, the information given below is sufficient enough.

                This Committee happens to be an amalgam of the forces of different categories having different political backgrounds. Seen from the angle of its formation, major portion of its constituents are those organisations forged, in their respective areas, by the traditional (disgruntled) leaders who came out of different opportunist political parties. These organisations happen to be more of an arragement for vote mobilizations than being the vehicles of struggles. These are the organisations built around single individuals with no democratic structures representing the peasants’ will. The organisations holding prominent positions in the Committee do not possess the background of any serious and militant peasant movement. The next category, other than those built around traditional leaders, are the NGO organisations or propaganda platforms with no clearcut class positions (of course, the practice of functioning on the basis of funds from imperialist institutions is there, indeed). The executive committee of this Platform comprises twenty members with V.M. Singh as the Convener and Aveek Saha as the Secretary.

V M Singh is a big landlord belonging to the Peelibheet area of UP holding hundreds of acres of land and other huge properties. He happens to be the cousin of the cabinet minister Menka Gandhi. He heads an organization comprised of national peasant/ labour organizations and holds influence among the cane-growers of UP. He is notorious as a defectionist leader who keeps on changing parties one after the other viz.,the Congress, the Samajvadi party, the Janta Dal, the Trinamool Congress et al. This time he is said to have tried to fight the UP legislative elections aligning with the BJP but the deal couldn’t be struck, anyhow. He has been fighting elections for the last fifteen years. According to details of his income furnished at the time of previous elections his income has increased whoppingly from forty crores to 631 crores. Major part of the other members of this Committee are the experienced combatants of the arena of ruling class vote parties, who have been MPs or MLAs from different traditional parties at different times. Another leading and prominent leader of the Committee is Joginder Yadav, who was expelled from the Aam Aadmi Party and presently is active on the platform of Swaraj Abhyan.  He has declared intentions and plans of rising in ruling class politics. His articles being published in different news papers clearly exhibit his ruling-class view-point with regard to the problems of the country. His plans regarding the present peasant movement can obviously be seen through the comments he made with a correspondent. “we intend to fight parliamentary elections as a political party, but before that we will have to garner force by dint of leading a ground movement.”

Another prominent leader of this Committee is Raju Shetty, who is a sitting MP and heads an organization in Maharashtra namely, “The Shetkari Sangathan.” He parted ways with Sharad Pawar in 2004 and had been a part of the NDA till 2014. Earlier, he was also a part of the BJP- Shiv Sena alliance government.

Much details are not possible in the article in hand. Otherwise, the situation, as a matter of fact, is such that, barring three or four, all of the members of the Committee are, or were, the leaders of the opportunist parties in different areas. All of them are players of the regional politics and strike deals with one or the other party at the time of every election. There is no history of serious peasant struggles under their respective leaderships, rather narratives of their opportunist practices are plenty. For them the peasant struggles are, in fact, the means of building up pressure for striking deals with big parties or governments as well as of protecting their class (i.e. landlord class) interests. During the ‘march and the meeting’ organized by them in the Parliamentary Street in the month of July, their leaders have explicitly said that their aim of that gathering was building pressure  from without for the discussion inside the Parliament. At that time, the leaders of different opportunist political parties had also addressed the audience.

Hazy Presentation of Class Demands

Even though the class political character of the overwhelming section of its leadership is sufficient enough to reveal  the reality regarding the character of the Committee as well as its inability to serve as an instrument of effective peasant struggles, yet its list of demands and presentation of these demands go further to explicitly reveal some other features  of their character. Freedom from indebtedness and remunerative prices are only two demands put forth by the Committee. Firstly, these two demands, in themselves, do not provide complete solution to the peasant problems. But even in the context of the partial and temporary relief, that those demands may provide, the presentation of these demands is faulty. In terms of class viewpoint, it is tainted with hazy and collaborationist coloring. Nowhere in the entire propaganda and argumentation of the Committee for the justification of its demands the mention of real reason for the accumulation of debt is considered necessary. Real and basic reasons for accumulation of debt are the acute shortage of land, higher rates of rent, dragnet of usurious exploitation and imperialist depredation etc., but nowhere have these been identified rather, like all traditional parties, only the less important reasons, such as the vagaries of season and harassment in the market are identified, and the Committee refuses to pinpoint the fundamental reasons. As matter of fact, both the demands put forth by the Committee are instrumental in serving the interests of the landlords. Waiving of debt of all peasants (in fact, the landlords in the first place) and remunerative prices for their crops-- both of these demands efface any sort of differentiation among different layers of peasants and consider all of them as a single layer. Considering the peasantry as a single layer, in the present context, does mean keeping the interests of the landlords to the fore. In the entire written material of the Committee (press statements, speeches and declarations) not even a single point is available delineating Committee`s approach of making any differentiation with the landlords or the rich peasants. On the contrary, Dr. Darshan Paul, a leading member of the Committee, while talking part in a discussion on a TV Channel, took the position of having no objection to waiving of landlords` debt.

The Committee has blurred the distinction between friends and foes in the struggle for freedom from indebtedness. Demand for debt waiver is not made only from the government, but also from the nation, as if there were some conflict of interests among the peasants and other laboring sections of the nation.  Such a presentation is a prevalent illusionary instrument in the hands of ruling class politicians. Among other reasons identified for accumulation of debt are included as the non availability of cheap loans, non availability of compensation for the damaged crops and non availability of appropriate rates for the crops. All these reasons suit mainly the interests of big land-owners, who send lacs of tons of surplus produce to the market.

Similarly, this platform makes only a formal mention regarding the issue of debt burden of agricultural laborers who form an important and vital part of the peasant movement. Denying the due place to the tragedy of this important agricultural section also shows that the Platform is committed to the interests of landlords and rich peasantry.

Useless Forms of Struggle

Next comes the selection of the forms of struggle. Landless and poor peasants can neither be fully drawn in the arena of struggles for the protection of the interest of the landlords and rich peasants, nor can their fighting mood be aroused for such struggles. It is also not desirable on the part of feudal classes to launch such struggles against their own regime. Thus, the Committee follows the line of keeping its struggles within the bounds of the Laxman Rekha of the State. Instead of resorting to generally prevalent forms of putting up pressure, it limits itself to the propaganda forms alone. Discussions, meetings, memorandums, correspondence and ‘yatras’ are settled sphere of such forms. It is adopting such forms in a situation where-in the State offensives are getting accelerated and the sources of livelihood are getting eroded and consequently, the validity of such forms of struggle has got completely exhausted since long and the peasantry is spontaneously adopting far sharper forms of struggle. Forms like holding of ‘Peasant Parliaments’ and ‘Peasant Panchayats’ are the forms adopted by the  peasant organizations functioning within the frame of traditional parliamentary politics. These forms are not only conventional and pacifying forms, they also give assurance to the regimes and the State that these protests will remain subject to their wishes. Such forms tend to thicken the parliamentary veil on the eyes of peasant masses and erode their resolve to advance further, relying on their own strength. Peasant movement in Punjab has already got rid of such decadent and conventional forms and taken to the path of militant and fighting forms.

It can clearly be discerned from the above discussion as well as from the practical activity till date that the purpose of the entire activity on the part of the leaders of the opportunist political parties is to forge a spring-board for up-lifting their respective prospects in the 2019 elections. Overall, the content of this activity is that of parliamentary opposition, and attempts at uniting the anti-BJP ruling class camp can be seen to some extent. Thus, not to speak of this platform as being useful for the sake of an effective and militant peasant struggles, it is of no use even for propaganda activity—and in no way, in comparison with the ongoing genuine struggle platform in Punjab.

Importance of the Past Lessons

It is not for the first time that the ruling class political forces have become active under the banner of people’s movement in order to take advantage of the people`s unrest. There are several occasions in the history of the country, when some sections of ruling classes have entered the arena of people`s struggles in a disguised form for the sake of taking advantage of the people`s rage. The communist revolutionary and revolutionary democratic movement of the country has got enough of such experiences in the accumulated form. Rise of the JP movement in the early 70s happened to be such a movement. It was the opposite section of ruling classes which came forward, wearing the mask of people`s demands, in order to take advantage of the unrest against the 25year-old Congress rule. This section raised the slogan of “Total Revolution”. It was by dint of such slogans that these sections could make it to the governmental power. At that time, the organizations upholding revolutionary orientation viz.  the PSU (Punjab Students Union) and Naujawan Bharat Sabha, seeing through the real character of this movement, came forward to raise separately a distinct class stand-point  and brought the real class issues to the forefront under the banner of “A Path of Salvation for the Nation”, and thus exposed the vague slogans of the JP movement. At that time also, some sections of communist revolutionaries got dazzled by that phenomenon and jumped on to the band-wagon of JP and later on got stuck into the quagmire of revisionism. Cherishing the hopes of using the JP movement, were themselves used in the process and ultimately, got deprived of their revolutionary character itself. While on the one hand, experience of standing outside the JP  movement, maintaining independent identity and raising distinct class stance is there, on the other hand the experience of working in the spontaneous movement of the peasantry, making energetic efforts for years together and ultimately building up of a peasant movement with a genuine revolutionary orientation, is also there. Both the experiences are enormously valuable for our revolutionary movement. The importance of these experiences lies in comprehending the permutation and combinations of those conditions and situations that become the basis of choosing the tactics of   becoming a part of some movements or raising distinct stand-point from outside of it. An important aspect in doing so is the strength and influence of the revolutionary side itself, which always needs to be taken into account. In the powerful peasant movement that arose in early 80s a leadership with a class stand-point of landlords and rich peasants came up. But at that time, this organization, which was remaining aloof from the political parties  and adopting sharp forms of struggle, held the scope for being  used for the purpose of garnering forces, while working within it, because this organization was playing a positive role, to an extent, in terms of realizing the militant mood of the peasantry in practice, expanding their organizational unity and laying the ground for peasant struggles. On the other hand, communist revolutionaries were yet to create their preliminary foot-hold among the peasantry. Peasant leaders committed to the revolutionary orientation struggled for years within that organization and were able to create a large layer of peasant activists as well as a mass-base  among the peasants, by dint of which they were ultimately able to build an organization with revolutionary orientation. Lakhowal- Rajewal leadership upholding landlords` point of view was isolated from the ranks. It was through such a long process of years that poor peasants could be brought to the fore and their leading status in the organization could be established. But at present, there is no rational basis for entering this Platform at the national-plane This Platform neither upholds the position of remaining aloof from the opportunist political parties   at any level, nor is it capable of realizing the fighting mood of the militant layers of the peasant masses into practice; on the contrary, it is capable only of dampening the fighting mood of the masses, derailing the struggle and entangling it into the whirlpool of opportunist parliamentary politics. The organizations from Punjab that are participating in that Platform are not in a position there to make their way through this milling crowd of this huge amalgam, checkmate the experienced combatants of the parliamentary arena and bring that platform on to the revolutionary orientation. What is worse, these organizations have made this choice (of going over to that Platform) in such a situation where-in large mass mobilizations are taking place in the state on the important issues such as peasant indebtedness, suicides etc. and wherein realization of the possibilities of turning these mobilizations into peasant militant activity in higher and sharper forms, demanded energetic efforts to be made. Layers of the poor peasants are being brought to the fore in these large mobilizations and they are playing the role of a backbone of the entire struggle.

Uphold Distinct Class View Point

So far as the issue of co-ordinating with such an activity at the national plane, why could it not be undertaken, while advancing the ongoing struggles in Punjab. If anyone sees in it the advantage of raising the issue of indebtedness, even then what were the difficulties in the co-ordinating the activity with it, while projecting the struggle tactics of distinct class differentiation?

Country-wide activity of this Committee is, indeed, a ruling class response to the aggravating agrarian crisis. Continually deepening agrarian crisis is giving birth to the eruption of peasant fury everywhere in the country. On the one hand, revolutionary forces are making energetic efforts for advancing this peasant fury and unrest in the direction of agrarian revolutionary movement. With that intent, they are marching forward on to the path of building up of unified peasant movement on the basis of teaming up of the agricultural laborers and landless and poor peasants. On the other hand, ruling class forces are also there in the field for the sake of misleading this unrest and using it in the interests of the landlord class. Imperialist onslaughts target the rich peasant layers also and consequently, these layers also tend to the path of struggle. With these class forces entering the arena of struggle an impression of great commotion is created, on account of socio-economic status of these classes and their reach upto the media, and all this affects the lower layers of the peasantry. In such a situation, it depends upon the awareness of the sections engaged in building up of revolutionary agrarian movement that they might be able to take advantage of this situation to the possible extent and at the same time demarcate with its limited and diversionary frame. Large mass base of the revolutionary forces among the peasantry in Punjab, provides them with good enough scope for implementing this orientation. 

Resolutely Persist in the Direction of

Building the Militant Peasant Movement

Even though the militant movement in Punjab has covered quite a distance in the direction of turning itself into an agrarian revolutionary movement, yet it has long way to go. Of course, the issues related to indebtedness and land have come to the fore, but the conversion of these issues into the issues of struggle and questions of life and death for the peasants, remains yet to be established. Particularly, the basic demands like abolition of usury and land distribution are to come forward as the issues of struggle for the peasant movement in Punjab, instead of remaining the issues of struggle for partial relief. In order to execute it, strengthening of the fighting-unity with argi-labour comes out as an important task. In this context Bharti Kisan Union (Ekta), as a promising contingent of the revolutionary peasant movement of Punjab, has laid down good traditions. It has played a leading role in bringing the basic issues to the fore-front; it has made significant advancement in the direction of promoting the poor peasant layers and brought them to the fore in the peasant struggles—making a demarcation with the pro-landlord stand-point (of Lakhowal-Rajewal unions); and it has developed a fighting-unity with the agri-labour sections. However, in the context of peasant movement as a whole, it still continues to be a pending-task. May it be a question of sharpening the anti-feudal edge of the peasant movement or that of giving more militant colouring to it, emergence of agri-labour as an independent organized social force on the one hand, and coming up of the poor peasant layers to the fore-front in the land-owning peasantry’s movement on the other hand, is a must. Peasant movement in Punjab needs to make vigorous efforts in this direction. For it to happen, class alignment in the land-owning peasantry`s movement needs to be manifested through projecting the demands like levying of taxes on the landlords and stopping to allow them squander the budgets in the name of subsidies. Hence the need to give due place to such demands in the charter of demand of the peasant organization, at the same time lending a helping hand to the agri-labour struggles and building up of struggles on common demands with them, is a must. In the same context, every effort that goes to serve the interests of the landlords in the name of peasantry needs to be determinedly opposed.

In view of the above, it can easily be discerned that the act of taking part and interest in the activities of the nation-wide Platform, instead of the joint Platform in Punjab, by some contingence of the revolutionary peasant movement in Punjab has not only damaged the prospects of the peasant movement in Punjab in the immediate context but has also displayed its deviation from the long-range orientation of serious mobilizations. Their recovery from this deviation and participation in the common platform for genuine struggles, would further brighten the prospects of the peasant movement in  Punjab.

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