Thursday, July 5, 2012

July 30-Aug 3 - CPIM Struggle for Food Security

Importance of the Struggle for Food Security
Prakash Karat

THE Left parties are conducting a joint campaign and movement on the issue of food security throughout the country in July-August. This movement is to demand a universal public distribution system to ensure food security for all citizens.

The demand for a food security law which will ensure the right to food for all people has become all the more urgent and necessary as there is no let-up in the price rise of food items and as the food inflation rate hovers around 10 per cent. India has the largest number of malnourished and undernourished people in the world. 

One would have thought that in such a grim situation, the UPA government would urgently take up the Food Security Bill pending before parliament. But it has become evident that the government has other priorities. 

HANKERING FOR FREE
MARKET ENTERPRISE 
The worsening economic situation has led to strident calls for the implementation of more neo-liberal measures. The economic slowdown is being attributed to the UPA-2 government’s failure to push through neo-liberal reforms. The economic advisors and the corporate media see the present impasse as the most opportune to prod the Manmohan Singh government into undertaking the very measures which have led to the crisis in the first place. The chorus of demands are coming in thick and fast: decontrol diesel pricing; open up multi-brand retail trade to FDI; stop harassing foreign investors and speculators with tax avoidance regulations; step up the disinvestment of shares in the public sector enterprises, and so on. 

That the UPA government is heeding to these demands became evident once again in the last few days. The prime minister has taken charge of the finance portfolio after the exit of Pranab Mukherjee on his becoming the candidate for the post of president. Immediately after assuming charge of the Finance Ministry, the prime minister met the officials of the ministry and told them: “We need to reverse the climate of pessimism. Revive the animal spirits in the country’s economy; there are problems on the tax front which need to be addressed.” The “animal spirits” is a refrain of the prime minister whenever he wishes to give a fresh thrust to free market enterprise. 

The advent of the prime minister to the Finance Ministry has led to two immediate steps being taken. The first is a re-look at the retrospective tax amendment passed in the finance bill during the last budget. This amendment enables the revival of the demand for capital gains tax on Vodafone to the amount of Rs 13,000 crore.   The amendment was cited as one of the main reasons for scaring off foreign investors and FII flows. Both C Rangarajan, the head of the prime minister’s Economic Advisory Council, and Montek Singh Ahluwalia, deputy chairman of the Planning Commission, have decried this step.  Though this has been passed by parliament, Ahluwalia had declared that it should be used in the rarest of occasions. 

The second step is the review of the General Anti-Avoidance Rules (GAAR). These are rules meant to check avoidance of tax on funds flowing into India utilising tax havens. This could have been used to check tax evasion by those utilising the Mauritius route. Due to strong opposition of the financial lobbies, the finance minister had announced that its implementation would be postponed by a year.  Now the effort is to scuttle it altogether. At the efforts of the prime minister and his economic advisors is to meet the demands of finance capital and speculators. The revival of investor sentiment and “animal spirits” is designed to appease these interests. For the rest, the talk of curbing the fiscal deficit and the runaway expenditure means austerity measures for the people. The demand to urgently cut subsidies on fuel and fertilisers is a corollary of this. 

DEMANDS OF
THE MOVEMENT
With such an outlook to revive the economy, measures such as the food security law are seen as populist and wasteful. The food security legislation was expected to be passed in the monsoon session of parliament. But there are no signs of this happening.  The Standing Committee of parliament looking into the legislation has not completed its work yet. The draft bill perpetuates the targeting of people into priority (BPL) and general (APL). This will automatically exclude 54 per cent of the families in rural areas and 72 per cent in the urban areas. The below-poverty-line (BPL) cardholders will have to pay Rs three per kg of rice when eight states are providing rice at Re one or two per kg for those in the BPL list.

The government is eager to please the foreign speculators and finance capital by further liberalising their entry and ensuring that their profits are not taxed while people of India are to suffer from hunger and malnutrition because the government cannot increase the food subsidy to provide for a public distribution system for all.  It is in this context that the Left parties’ movement for food security assumes importance. In the weeks to come, lakhs of people are going to be mobilised on the four demands of the campaign which are as follows:

1) No BPL or APL, we demand a universal public distribution system
2) 35 kg of foodgrains at not more than Rs two per kg every month for each family
3) Scrap the Planning Commission’s bogus poverty estimates as the basis for welfare rights
4) Implement the Swaminathan Commission recommendations for a fair price and profit margin for farmers.

This movement will culminate in a five-day dharna from July 30 to August 3, 2012 at New Delhi during the monsoon session of parliament. All those who have concern for the welfare of the people and who consider the right to food should be a fundamental right for all citizens should extend their full support to this movement. 

CPI(M)’s Demands for Nagri Peasants in JHARKHAND


 ON June 29, the Jharkhand state secretariat of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) urges immediate intervention of the Arjun Munda government of the state for rehabilitation and resettlement of about 500 poor peasant tenants of Nagri in Ranchi district.

It also demanded that the state government must submit a petition before the Ranchi High Court for grant of stay on operationalisation of its earlier order to begin construction work on the acquired land at Nagri for a law university.

It may be noted that in 1958 the then state government of Bihar had acquired 227.71 acres of mostly tribal land at Nagri in Kanke block of Ranchi district, affecting a total of 153 tenants. A majority of 128 tenants at that time actively opposed this acquisition and refused to take compensation.

The state government did not use this acquired land during the last 54 years and about 500 peasant descendants of the tenants continued to keep the land in their possession and cultivate it. They depended on it for their livelihood.

Now after 54 years, however, the state government suddenly woke up to establish their right on the land for construction of an IIM, an IIT and a law university on this land. The Ranchi High Court passed order for forcible removal of these peasants treating them as encroachers and for early construction of the law university on this tribal land. The Supreme Court refused to admit the SLP filed on behalf of the land losers.

The state unit of the CPI(M) has been of the opinion that this British made antiquated Land Acquisition Act 1894 has been anti-peasant and ensures no legal right for the tenants. The party has therefore demanded its amendment. Two bills before the parliament --- the Land Acquisition (Amendment) Bill 2007 and the associated Rehabilitation & Resettlement Bill 2007 --- were allowed to be lapsed and replaced by a new one --- The Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Bill 2011 --- which is now pending before the parliament.

Land acquisition, rehabilitation and resettlement have been accepted as a composite principle. It is in this context that the CPI(M)’s demand for rehabilitation and resettlement of Nagri peasant tenants and maintenance of status quo ante regarding the acquired land are justified. It is the state government’s responsibility to act on that basis, taking all parties on board, and move the Ranchi High Court for protecting the peasant tenants’ rights.

Left parties plan agitation in Haryana

The Haryana units of the CPI (M) and the CPI have decided to hold block level protest actions during July 16-27 all over the State on the issue of food security and other burning problems including failure of the recently set up thermal power plants in Khedar and Yamunanagar leading to acute power and water crisis.

CPI (M) State secretary Inderjit Singh and CPI State secretary Daryao Singh Kashyap told  that a joint meeting was held in Rohtak where it was underlined that the system of remunerative price of crop for farmers was entirely dependent on making the public distribution system fully universal rather than a targeted one as sought by the United Progressive Alliance regime in the proposed Food Security Bill.
The Left Parties have also demanded a thorough probe in the “most grave case of sub-standard machinery and equipment used in the thermal power plants in Khedar and Yamunanagar.

“Only through an impartial inquiry can the persons responsible for alleged corruption be severely punished,’’ Mr. Singh asserted.
The Haryana Government was not coming out with reasonable explanation even as the people were reeling under acute scarcity of power and water all over the State. “The continued silence of the government over the failure of the power plants is intriguing,’’ he added. Problems related to the MGNREGA, residential plots and worsening crime situation would also be focused upon during the forthcoming mass campaign, he added.
Courtesy : The Hindu