Punjab is going through a lot of turmoil. The state which is known as the granary of India is now in the grip of an acute agrarian crisis. Reeling under spiralling debts, marginal peasants and agricultural labourers in many parts of Punjab are being driven out of agriculture. According to Prof. Sukhpal of Punjab Agricultural University, Ludhiana, around 2.5 lakh households have been pushed out of agriculture during 1995-2005 and 7,500 new households have joined the category of rich farmers with landholding exceeding 25 acres.

Contract farming is on in full swing with Reliance, Nestle, Pepsico and other MNCs taking over large tracts of farm lands on lease for a period of anything between 10 to 55 years. Large tracts of land are also being appropriated by the education mafia for private engineering and medical colleges run by the kulak-trader lobby. Massive real estate projects are coming up on agricultural land in the vicinity of towns and highways.

Only a handful of farmers and traders (not more than 7%) are reaping the harvest of this narrow kulak-landlord path of development and appropriating all government resources, while 65% of the farming population holding less than 10 acres of cultivable land are facing acute crisis. There is no increased industrial development in the state to absorb the people who are being pushed out of agriculture. The scope of employment in government jobs and public sector has been steadily declining while the private sector prefers to employ un-unionised migrant labour with low wages and little or no obligation to offer social securities of health, housing and pension benefits.

The Akali-BJP government is further burdening the common people by increasing taxes, levying user charges, raising transport fares and electricity tariffs and promoting privatization and corporatization in every possible sector. This has only aggravated the crisis and fuelled the anger of the common people who are bearing the brunt of the government policies.

There is a surge in ground-level popular struggles and various Left forces are playing a key role in many of these struggles. The ongoing movement against the unbundling of Punjab state electricity board has acquired a sustained and broad popular dimension defying severe repression, police firing and repeated victimizations through fake cases and arrests. Recently the movement has witnessed two massive mobilizations of 30 to 50 thousand farmers and agricultural labourers in Jagram and Moga.

There is of course a section of rich peasants who wants to blunt the political edge of the movement and restrict its scope by excluding the issues of the agricultural labourers and often settle half way through talks and deals with the government. However, the movement has galvanized the people at the grassroots and is objectively acquiring a growing political edge.

There is also a growing movement of students demanding concessional bus passes in the private buses even as the Badal government is steadily privatizing the state transport service. Since Mr. Badal’s family is virtually monopolizing the ownership of private fleets in state roadways, massive attacks by the goonda-police nexus were unleashed on the protesting students. Student organizations responded with huge state-wide mobilisations in Moga against these attacks. Mr. Badal came out with an ordinance to force the students to pay for ‘damages caused to the buses by the agitation’. A large number of youths who were recruited as teachers on contract basis are fighting for the status of government employees. The self-immolation of one young woman at a dharna in Kapurthala gave rise to massive protests and pushed the government to concede some demands. The government employees had a good mobilization in Chandigarh centring on the demand of payment of 6th Pay Commission arrears.

But the social force whose assertion is most visible is the class of rural/agricultural labourers. The Mansa struggle just before the last assembly elections led by our Party on the issues of homestead land and NREGA attracted the attention of the whole state. Recently, when the sowing season of paddy started, our demand for Rs 2500 per acre for sowing paddy found widespread support and inspired the agrarian labourers. The drop in migrant labour gave a boost to the demand for local agrarian labour. Defying social boycotts and repressive and divisive tactics of the kulak lobby, agrarian labourers have won impressive wage increases with per acre sowing rate going up from Rs. 900-1200 to Rs. 1900-2300. This achievement has infused agrarian labourers in the entire Malwa belt with a new confidence and enthusiasm.

Another key issue of mobilization is the fight for implementation of NREGA. The government deliberately discourages the implementation of NREGA so that there is a large reserve of unemployed rural labour, particularly women, who can be recruited at very low wages and in humiliating conditions for sundry household and agricultural work in kulak households. Thus, though in Barnala and Mansa around 30% of the population comprises agrarian labourers with large number of reported cases of suicides, only 11 families in Barnala and 107 families in Mansa got 100 days jobs last year while nobody got unemployment allowance in these two districts. There is enthusiastic response amongst the rural labour, particularly among women, on the issue of NREGA. Now in the entire Malwa district, a massive campaign is being launched on the issues of homestead land, NREGA, BPL cards, wages and dignity.

The Badal government is coming down heavily on these movements with massive police repression and systematic attempts to justify these crackdowns by invoking the bogey of Maoism. Several leaders and activists have been booked under UAPA and the DGP has been holding press conferences to declare how firm he is in wiping out the “Maoist menace”. Former Chief Minister and other Congress leaders are also blaming the Badal government for its “failure” to tackle the Maoist problem which according to them has spread to all the 22 districts. And surprisingly, the CPI(M) too has raised the Maoist issue to dissociate from the united anti-privatisation movement. The mass organizations of the CPI and CPI(M), who were part of this movement, got isolated in the Jagram rally when other organizations refused to accept their sectarian demand of passing a resolution “condemning the Maoists for destabilizing the Left Front government in West Bengal”.

 The need of the hour is to give the growing grassroots churnings a stronger political direction and work for a powerful Left assertion by taking agrarian labour activism as the key and uniting with the small-marginal peasantry. Given the strong caste-community links in the society and strong grip of religious bodies like SGPC which are controlled by the kulak lobby, it is difficult to make inroads in the farmers’ movement, but the government policies of opening up of agriculture and resultant agrarian crisis are providing the basis for increased differentiation within the peasantry. We must formulate correct policies to properly articulate and earnestly take up the real issues of the small-marginal farmers and agrarian labourers to bring about a change in the class-balance of forces in rural Punjab, particularly in the Malwa belt. This is essential for the assertion of the Left as an independent force in the challenging political scene of Punjab.

Swapan Mukherjee