What are some of the challenges faced by women in agriculture in India?

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“Modiji said he would double our incomes…where are the achhe din [good days]?” asks Hridesh Gaur (centre), 34, a farmer from Bhopal district. This traditional BJP stronghold is also angry with the Congress for not keeping its promise of waiving all loans of up to Rs 2 lakh.

Divided into two tehsils (administrative blocks)–Huzur and Berasia–Bhopal with 1.9 million electors will go to polls on May 12, 2019 in India’s ongoing general elections. Winning with 51% votes in the 2009 general elections and 63% votes in 2014, the constituency has been a stronghold of the BJP.

But, in our travels here–a state whose agriculture sector has recorded the fastest annual growth in the eight years to 2015 (10.9%)–we found farmers unhappy with the BJP. It is widely believed that farmer fury had voted the party out of the state assembly in 2018, after 15 years in power.

“Modiji said that he would double our incomes but in his later years in power he even stopped the bonus we used to get for wheat,” said Hridesh Gaur, a 34-year-old farmer. “Kahan hain acche din (where are the good days the party promised)?” he added referring to one of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s slogans. Gaur was referring to the fact that after coming to power in 2014, the Modi government had stopped states from giving bonuses over the minimum support price (MSP) reasoning that this distorted the market, affected cultivation patterns and increased the subsidy burden.

Farmers in Kodia were unhappy that in the ongoing election frenzy, the central and state governments had forgotten their problems–securing an MSP for all major crops, and bringing in measures to deal with poor irrigation infrastructure, rising farm debts and drought.
But, the Congress, which has been in power in the state for four months, has not managed to impress Kodia’s voters either.

“The Congress is no better,” said Gaur. “Farmers voted for them in the state election because they promised loan waivers for farm debts of up to Rs 2 lakh. I also have a debt of Rs 2 lakh but only Rs 35,000 got waived.” The bank is refusing to give him an all-clear certificate till it gets the loan money it waived from the government.

About 41% of India’s rural voters are worried about irrigating their farms, 39% about loan availability and 39% about higher price realisation for farm products, according to a March 2019 survey by Association for Democratic Reforms, a Delhi-based advocacy.

Drought has dried up water sources, worsened agri distress
Most public tube-wells and taps had run dry in Kodia. Only 15-20 private ones, about 500-ft deep, had any water left and the families that owned these were sharing the water with the rest of the village. The extraction of water through tube-wells is banned but the people of Kodia have no other option.

“If you go around the village at around 6 in the morning, you can see lines of women and children standing in different alleys in front of various houses, waiting for their turn to fill buckets,” Gor said.

Bhopal is among the 36 of Madhya Pradesh’s 52 districts to face a drought in 2019. Most parts of the state experienced 20-50% deficient rainfall over two consecutive years. In the ongoing drought that has gripped 42% of India’s land area, Madhya Pradesh is among the worst-hit, IndiaSpend reported on April 3, 2019. This has exacerbated the farm distress that the state is already reeling under.

About 40 rivers that provide water to 4,000 villages in the 36 drought-hit districts have dried up and the micro-watershed management system is in a complete disarray. More than 21.29 million hectares of the catchment area of these rivers–69% of state’s total area–is parched along nearly a distance of 2.19 million km, according to a report by the panchayat and rural development department of the state, IANS reported on March 16, 2019.

One of the primary reasons for this drought is insufficient and irregular rainfall.

Rainfall in Bhopal has not only been deficient since 2017, it has also become erratic over 20 years to 2018. The south-west monsoon months–June to September–have been experiencing increasingly long dry spells coupled with events of heavy rainfall, according to NOAH, an application that tracks rainfall and surface water changes using satellite data.

Source:NOAH, an application that tracks rainfall and surface water changes using satellite data.
 

Source: India Meteorology Department

Not just Bhopal, most of Madhya Pradesh has experienced a significant decline in monsoon rains over 62 years, from 1951 to 2013. This is attributed to climate change, according to a 2016 study by Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad.

The state receives 90% of its rainfall during monsoon months when reservoirs and underground aquifers are recharged. This water is used to irrigate winter crops. But due to increasing events of heavy rainfall, the water runs off instead of percolating into the ground.
In central India, the frequency of days with heavy rainfall (at least 100 mm/day) increased from 45 to 65 days per year over 50 years to 2000, while the frequency of extreme rainfall events (at least 150 mm rainfall/day) has doubled from 9 to 18 days per year during this period, as per a 2013 study by the Bhopal-based Indian Institute of Forest Management (IIFM).

Agri distress worsens
Erratic rainfalls in the last 15 years have caused up to a 60% decrease in crop yields in the eastern part of Madhya Pradesh, with about 90% of the region being rain-fed, said the IIFM study linking the rainfall variability to the crop productivity.
Like the rest of the state, for farmers in Bhopal–where 42% of net sown area is rainfed–sparse rainfall means loss of produce and income.

“I usually get 15-16 quintal of wheat from an acre, but in the last cycle, I only got 6-7 quintal (down by 56%) due to lack of water,” said Gor. “There was very little rain in 2018 and by the time we started sowing wheat in November, there was very little water in the bore wells. We could only irrigate the wheat crop once after sowing it.” Wheat normally needs three rounds of irrigation.

Usually farmers in MP sow only two crops, kharif (monsoon crops) and rabi (winter crops). But some also plant zayad (pre-monsoon crops). About 10-15% of farmers in Kodia used to cultivate pre-monsoon vegetables but the drought has made that impossible, we were told.
“The administration here has not done anything to manage the drought yet,” said Gor.

Farmers here have also been demanding canals for irrigation. “But, neither the state nor the central government heeded us,” said Hridesh Gaur. “A farmer cannot be successful if he depends only on underground water.”

If a borewell fails, a farmer needs Rs 2 lakh to get it repaired and so he takes another loan and this raises farming costs again while crops continue to fetch meager rates at the market.

A fractured farm economy with about 46% households indebted poses a challenge to the growth of the state that depends on agriculture for 30% of its income. As many as 1,321 farmers committed suicide in MP in 2016, the highest since 2013, according to the government data presented in Lok Sabha on March 20, 2018. While farm suicides dropped by 10% elsewhere in the country in the two years to 2016, Madhya Pradesh saw a 21% jump, IndiaSpend reported on November 30, 2018.

In the last decade, the state has also seen many farm protests. The last big agitation, in 2017 in Mandsaur, a district located 300 km north-west of Bhopal, had turned violent after six farmers were killed as police fired on them. The main demand of farmers was a higher MSP, a demand that is now common nationwide.

MSP: the crux of the farm crisis
“Why can’t our MSP be ensured?” asked Anmol Mewarha, 59. “Iss karz se hi kisaan marta hai (this debt kills farmers).”

With the cost of production rising, farming is no longer a profitable enterprise. The government has declared the MSP for wheat (Rs 1,840/quintal) and soybean (Rs 3,399/quintal), Kodia’s main crops. “But we rarely get to sell our produce at the MSP,” Mewarha complained.
Madhya Pradesh contributes 19% to the national output of wheat and is its second largest producer, after Uttar Pradesh. It is the largest producer of soyabean, producing 31% of the national output. 

“It seems like we are punished for one thing that we are supposed to do… produce more,” said Gor.

Why then is the state still reeling under an agricultural crisis? To understand the problem, Mewarha helped IndiaSpend chart the cost and market rate for both the crops for an entire crop cycle.  

Wheat needs three months to ripen, he explained, and a profit of Rs 2,000 per hectare means an earning of just Rs 600 per month to spend on his family of four. This is 50% lower than what he used to get a decade ago. “Input cost has doubled in the last 9-10 years, halving our profit because the government did not increase the MSP in the same ratio,” he said.  

As per Mewarha’s calculation, soybean farmers bear a 30% loss per hectare due to low market rates for the produce. “A farm labourer who earns Rs 200 per day makes more money,” he said. “Anaaj bech lo, phir karz chadha do, aur paisa khatam (Sell your produce, pay back the debt and the money is over.)”

‘Why not implement existing MSP?’
The story of MP’s farmers is the story of India’s farmers in an era of record harvests. India grew more foodgrain in 2017 than ever before, and the government’s agriculture budget rose 111% over four years to 2017-18, as IndiaSpend reported in January 2018. Yet prices crashed, unpaid agricultural loans grew 20% over the year to 2017, and 600 million Indians who depend on farming struggled to get by.

The average monthly income of an agricultural household in MP is Rs 6,210, which lags behind the national average of Rs 6,426 (July 2012-June 2013), Mint reported in June 2017.

To provide farmers MSP for their crops, the state needs to strictly implement the existing regulation in the market act, GS Kaushal, former director of the state’s agriculture department, told IndiaSpend. “MP’s mandi act clearly says that if the produce passes the quality test, it cannot be bought below MSP,” said Kaushal. “Why does the government not enforce this?”

Families engaged in agriculture have been losing their purchasing power and faulty government policies are compounding the crisis, Kaushal said. “Why should the government promote subsidised imports of agricultural commodities available in the country?” he asked.
Not only does the agriculture market need a policy shake-up but the government also needs to increase storage facilities and re-survey the cost of cultivation to revise the MSP for different crops, Kaushal said.

Flagship schemes of BJP and Congress fail to impress farmers
After being defeated in assembly elections in three states–MP, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh–the BJP government at the Centre, in its last budget, launched a scheme to pay farmers with less than 2 hectares of land, a sum of Rs 6,000 every year. The move was seen to counter the loan waivers offered by the Congress during its campaign for the assembly elections. But, both, the Congress and the BJP have failed to impress the farmers of Kodia.

Om Prakash, 57, is a farmer who also runs a small grocery shop to pay for his family’s daily expenses. “Modiji is paying us Rs 6,000 a year but that isn’t enough to even buy clothes for my family of five,” he said. “Has he never visited a farmer’s house to understand his expenses? I am not going to vote for the BJP this time.”

“Modiji is paying us Rs 6,000 a year. This amount can’t even buy clothes for my family of five. Has he never visited a farmer’s house?” Om Prakash (white shirt), like most farmers in Kodia village in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, is upset that all farmer issues have been forgotten in election frenzy.

His neighbour, and a farmer, Badri Prasad countered him. “It is true that the BJP has not done a lot, but most of the good initiatives in the state happened during Shivraj Singh Chouhan’s 15-year long tenure,” he said.

It was Singh’s government which allowed farmers to sell their wheat at cooperative societies, which are closer than the agriculture markets. “Before that farmers had to wait in long queues for days at markets to sell their wheat,” said Prasad.

The farmers we spoke to were not happy with the Congress regime’s implementation of its promise to waive farm loans upto Rs 2 lakh within 10 days of coming to power. “It has been six  months, small loans, say of Rs 30,000-Rs 40,000, have been waived but what about the big loans?” Prasad asked. “It is better that Modi be given another chance.”

The Congress government’s farm loan waiver is said to have benefitted 3.4 million farmers who had taken loans of up to Rs 2 lakh from national and co-operative banks till March 31, 2018.

“I will not vote for Congress until my last breath,” said Mohan Lal, 58, a farmer whose kurta and dhoti have turned yellow with time and overuse. “When Digvijay Singh (Congress candidate from Bhopal in current elections) was chief minister, he took seven acres of my land and distributed it into scheduled caste under a scheme. I am only left with one acre now.”   

The BJP government had given every household an LPG gas connection to cook under the Ujjwala scheme, he pointed out. But his 50-year-old wife continues to cook in mud stoves. “The gas is costly we use it only on special occasions,” said Mohan.

(Tripathi is a principal correspondent with IndiaSpend.)

Courtesy: India Spend
 

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Today, the US and Europe cling to a moribund form of capitalism and have used various mechanisms to bolster the system in the face of economic stagnation and massive inequalities: the raiding of public budgets, the expansion of credit to consumers and governments to sustain spending and consumption, financial speculation and increased militarism. Via ‘globalisation’, Western powers have also been on an unrelenting drive to plunder what they regard as ‘untapped markets’ in other areas of the globe.

Agricapital has been moving in on Indian food and agriculture for some time. But India is an agrarian-based country underpinned by smallholder agriculture and decentralised food processing. Foreign capital therefore first needs to displace the current model before bringing India’s food and agriculture sector under its control. And this is precisely what is happening.

Western agribusiness is shaping the ‘development’ agenda in India. Over 300,000 farmers have taken their lives since 1997 and many more are experiencing economic distress or have left farming as a result of debt, a shift to (GMO) cash crops and economic liberalisation.

Other sectors have not been immune to this bogus notion of development. Millions of people have been displaced to facilitate the needs of resource extraction industries, land grabs for Special Economic Zones, nuclear plants and other large-scale projects. And the full military backing of the state has been on hand to forcibly evict people, place them in camps and inflict human rights abuses on them.

To help open the nation to foreign capital, proponents of economic neoliberalism are fond of stating that ‘regulatory blockages’ must be removed. If particular ‘blockages’ stemming from legitimate protest, rights to land and dissent cannot be dealt with by peaceful means, other methods are used. And when increasing mass surveillance or widespread ideological attempts to discredit and smear does not secure compliance or dilute the power of protest, brute force is on hand.

India’s agrarian crisis

India is currently witnessing a headlong rush to facilitate (foreign) agricapital and the running down of the existing system of agriculture. Millions of small-scale and marginal farmers are suffering economic distress as the sector is deliberately made financially non-viable for them.

At the same time, the country’s spurt of GDP growth – the holy grail of ‘development’ – has largely been fuelled on the back of cheap food and the subsequent impoverishment of farmers. The gap between their income and the rest of the population has widened enormously to the point where rural India consumes less calories per head of population than it did 40 years ago. Meanwhile, unlike farmers, corporations receive massive handouts and interest-free loans but have failed to spur job creation.

The plan is to displace the existing system of livelihood-sustaining smallholder agriculture with one dominated from seed to plate by transnational agribusiness and retail concerns. To facilitate this, independent cultivators are being bankrupted, land is to be amalgamated to facilitate large-scale industrial cultivation and remaining farmers will be absorbed into corporate supply chains and squeezed as they work on contracts, the terms of which will be dictated by large agribusiness and chain retailers.

US agribusiness corporations are spearheading the process, the very companies that fuel and thrive on a five-year US taxpayer-funded farm bill subsidy of around $500 billion. Their industrial model in the US is based on the overproduction of certain commodities often sold at prices below the cost of production and dumped on the rest of the world, thereby undermining farmers’ livelihoods and agriculture in other countries.

It is a model designed to facilitate the needs and profits of these corporations which belong to the agritech, agrichemicals, commodity trading, food processing and retail sectors. A model that can only survive thanks to taxpayer handouts and by subsidising the farmer who is squeezed at one end by seed and agrochemical manufacturers and at the other, by powerful retail interests. A model that can only function by externalising its massive health, environmental and social costs. And a model that only leads to the destruction of rural communities and jobs, degraded soil, less diverse and nutrient-deficient diets, polluted water, water shortages and poor health.

If we look at the US model, it serves the needs of agribusiness corporations and large-scale retailers, not farmers, the public nor the environment. So by bowing to their needs via World Bank directives and the US-Indo Knowledge Initiative on Agriculture, what is the future to be for India?

A mainly urbanised country reliant on an industrial agriculture and all it entails, including denutrified food, increasingly monolithic diets, the massive use of agrochemicals and food contaminated by hormones, steroids, antibiotics and a range of chemical additives. A country with spiralling rates of ill health, degraded soil, a collapse in the insect population, contaminated and depleted water supplies and a cartel of seed, chemical and food processing companies with ever-greater control over the global food production and supply chain.

But we don’t need a crystal ball to look into the future. Much of the above is already taking place, not least the destruction of rural communities, the impoverishment of the countryside and continuing urbanisation, which is itself causing problems for India’s crowded cities and eating up valuable agricultural land.

So why would India want to let the foxes guard the hen house? Why mimic the model of intensive, chemical-dependent agriculture of the US and be further incorporated into a corrupt US-dominated global food regime that undermines food security and food sovereignty? After all, numerous high-level reports have concluded that policies need to support more resilient, diverse, sustainable (smallholder) agroecological methods of farming and develop decentralised, locally-based food economies.

Yet the trend in India continues to move in the opposite direction towards industrial-scale agriculture and centralised chains for the benefit of Monsanto-Bayer, Cargill and other transnational players.

The plan is to shift hundreds of millions from the countryside into the cities to serve as a cheap army of labour for offshored foreign companies, mirroring what China has become: a US colonial outpost for manufacturing that has boosted corporate profits at the expense of US jobs. In India, rural migrants are to become the new ‘serfs’ of the informal services and construction sectors or to be trained for low-level industrial jobs. Even here, however, India might have missed the boat as jobless ‘growth’ seems to have arrived as the effects of automation and artificial intelligence are eradicating the need for human labour across many sectors.

If we look at the various Western powers, to whom many of India’s top politicians look to in order to ‘modernise’ the country’s food and agriculture, their paths to economic prosperity occurred on the back of colonialism and imperialism. Do India’s politicians think this mindset has disappeared?

Fuelled by capitalism’s compulsion to overproduce and then seek out new markets, the same mentality now lurks behind the neoliberal globalisation agenda: terms and policies like ‘foreign direct investment’, ‘ease of doing business’, making India ‘business friendly’ or ‘enabling the business of agriculture’ embody little more than the tenets of neoliberal fundamentalism wrapped in benign-sounding words. It boils down to one thing: Monsanto-Bayer, Cargill and other transnational corporations will decide on what is to be eaten and how it is to be produced and processed.

Alternatives to development

Current policies seek to tie agriculture to an environmentally destructive, moribund system of capitalism. Practical solutions to the agrarian crisis must be based on sustainable agriculture which places the small farmer at the centre of policies: far-sighted and sustained policy initiatives centred on self-sufficiency, localisation, food sovereignty, regenerative agriculture and agroecology.

The scaling up of agroecological approaches should be a lynchpin of genuine rural development. Other measures involve implementing land reforms, correcting rigged trade, delinking from capitalist globalisation (capital controls) and managing foreign trade to suit smallholder farmers’ interests not those of foreign agricapital.

More generally, there is the need to recognise that genuine sustainable agriculture can only be achieved by challenging power relations, especially resisting the industrial model of agriculture being rolled out by powerful agribusiness corporations and the neoliberal policies that serve their interests.

What is required is an ‘alternative to development’ as post-development theorist Arturo Escobar explains:

“Because seven decades after World War II, certain fundamentals have not changed. Global inequality remains severe, both between and within nations. Environmental devastation and human dislocation, driven by political as well as ecological factors, continues to worsen. These are symptoms of the failure of “development,” indicators that the intellectual and political post-development project remains an urgent task.”
Looking at the situation in Latin America, Escobar says development strategies have centred on large-scale interventions, such as the expansion of oil palm plantations, mining, and large port development.

And it is similar in India: commodity monocropping; immiseration in the countryside; the appropriation of biodiversity, the means of subsistence for millions of rural dwellers; unnecessary and inappropriate environment-destroying, people-displacing infrastructure projects; and state-backed violence against the poorest and most marginalised sections of society.

These problems, says Escobar, are not the result of a lack of development but of ‘excessive development’. Escobar looks towards the worldviews of indigenous peoples and the inseparability and interdependence of humans and nature for solutions.

He is not alone. Writers Felix Padel and Malvika Gupta argue that adivasi (India’s indigenous peoples) economics may be the only hope for the future because India’s tribal cultures remain the antithesis of capitalism and industrialisation. Their age-old knowledge and value systems promote long-term sustainability through restraint in what is taken from nature. Their societies also emphasise equality and sharing rather than hierarchy and competition.

These principles must guide our actions regardless of where we live on the planet because what’s the alternative? A system driven by narcissism, domination, ego, anthropocentrism, speciesism and plunder. A system that is using up oil, water and other resources much faster than they can ever be regenerated. We have poisoned the rivers and oceans, destroyed natural habitats, driven wildlife species to (the edge of) extinction and have altered the chemical composition of the atmosphere to the point that runaway climate change seems more and more likely.

And, as we see all around us, the outcome is endless conflicts over fewer and fewer resources, while nuclear missiles hand over humanity’s head like a sword of Damocles.

Colin Todhunter is an independent journalist. Join him on Twitter

Courtesy: Counter Current

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Nation for Farmers organised the National Conference for Special Parliament Session on Agrarian Crisis at the Indian International Center today to address some of the key issues that farmers and agricultural labourers are facing in the country. The conference also aims at discussing the onslaught being faced by women, workers and the youth. Today was the first day of a three-day discussion that will conclude on March 3.

Courtesy: Newsclick.in

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Dr. Ashok Dhawale of the AIKS tweeted: Huge public meeting of 40,000 peasants led by AIKS begins at Mumbai Naka at Nashik. Thousands more peasants yet pouring in. After media uproar, govt forced to release peasants from Thane-Palghar districts. AIKS general secretary Hannan Mollah inaugurates meeting. Long Live AIKS! https://twitter.com/DrAshokDhawale/status/1098213730289102850?s=17

 
March 2018, and again in November a historic march of 30,.000 farmers from different parts of Maharashtra to Mumbai had shaken the political leadership.

According to local media reports, the district administration in Nashik had refused permission to the AIKS to organise a farmers’ march and asked them to organise a demonstration. However, the AIKS reiterated on Tuesday that it intended to go forward with the farmers’ march.
 
The All India Kisan Sabha (AIKS) said it has mobilised nearly 80,000 farmers from different parts of Maharashtra who will begin marching towards Mumbai from Wednesday. They are expected to reach the city by February 27 and gather near Mantralaya, the state secretariat where the budget session of the assembly will be in progress.The farmers will press for demands like farm loan waiver, minimum support price, irrigation facilities and provision of a pension to farmers.
 
According to media reports, the district administration in Nashik has refused permission to the AIKS to organise a farmers’ march and asked them to organise a demonstration. However, the AIKS reiterated on Tuesday that it intended to go forward with the farmers’ march.
 
AIKS also said in a statement that their general secretary Dr. Ajit Navale was facing harassment by police forces and the march was being halted in different regions by force. Reports suggested that the government has decided to crack down on farmers’ groups in different parts of the state which have been mobilising people for the march.
 
They said that farmers coming to Mumbai from the Thane Palghar route were stopped by the police at Jawhar, Dahanu, Kasa, Dhundhalwadi, Vikramgad and more areas. The people struggled against this crackdown but the vehicles were slowly allowed to move forward. AIKS alleged that district officials have filed police cases against those who have organised farmers’ conventions in Ahmednagar district. The farmers collective said that the govt failed to fulfil any promises they made during their march to Mumbai in 2018.  

Related Articles:

1. Kisan Long March ends with Fresh Promises to Farmers

2. The Kisan Long March enters Mumbai: Will their voices be heard?
 

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The Right to Food Campaign requests all political parties to consider the following suggestions towards ensuring right to food for all while working on their manifestos for the General Elections 2019. We need to remember that these elections are coming at the backdrop of regular reports of starvation deaths from different parts of the country on the one hand and rural distress and farmers’ protests on the other.

While the country now has a National Food Security Act (NFSA), the recent spate of deaths shows that the Act is limited in its vision and implementation. It is currently not even able to ensure the minimum; which is that a person does not go hungry due to lack of food. The Act needs to be amended to expand its scope and also ensure that it prevents hunger (by including a section on starvation protocol) and also contributes to better nutrition status of the people (by including pulses, oil in PDS, eggs in schools and anganwadis etc.).

Along with the NFSA, it needs to be recognised the current situation of hunger is a reflection of rural distress arising out of the agrarian crisis, poor employment and livelihood opportunities, failure of various social security mechanisms and the overall macroeconomic situation. In this regard, we also make some recommendations for the manifesto beyond the changes required in the NFSA framework.

Public Distribution System
Universalisation: Currently, the NFSA is supposed to provide 67% of the population in the country with subsidised foodgrains (cereals). However, it is seen that a number of deserving households (or some members of household) are excluded in many states due to identification issues as well as the caps placed on the number of ration cards (based on 2011 Census data). In order to avoid these exclusion errors, the PDS benefits must be made universal for all residents.

Increase Foodgrains: Increase the foodgrains provided, especially millets, in the NFSA, from 5 kgs at the current prices under the Act.
Double the Antyodaya Coverage: Double the coverage of the Antyodaya Anna Yojana, with priority to vulnerable groups such as Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups (PVTGs) and single women, as per Supreme Court orders.

Pulses and Oil: Include dal (pulses), edible cooking oil and other nutritious foods at subsidised rates in the PDS.

Local Procurement: Procurement must be done in an increasingly local manner, promoting local varieties.

Children’s Right to Quality Nutrition
Eggs: Provide eggs 6 days a week in all schools and anganwadis and ensure midday meals are also served during school vacations.
Child Development Centres: To treat severely malnourished children, substantially increase the quantum of and support for community-based village child development centres (VDCs).

Crèches: To reduce the care work burden on women as well as to provide better nutrition, all children under six years of age must have access to a crèche/day care centre which provides trained adult supervision, child development activities, adequate nutrition and link to health services. The crèche access will need to be provided through multiple models including workplace crèches, anganwadi-cum-crèches and so on. Twenty-five percent of anganwadi centres should be converted to anganwadi-cum-crèches and should be operational for 8 hours.

ICDS and Mid-day Meals: The diet under the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) and mid-day meals should be enhanced through the use of millets, animal products like eggs, milk, yogurt, and meat (for those who eat it), and other locally available foods. Menus must be decided primarily in consultation with the community.

Universalisation with quality and equity of ICDS is required to protect the rights of all young children, pregnant and lactating women and adolescent girls. All children in India must have access to the full range of anganwadi services. In addition to improving coverage, several steps should be taken to improve ICDS quality and infrastructure.

Coverage of ICDS: Along with dalits, tribals, minorities, disabled children; special efforts must be made to also cover children of PVTGs and migrants through different models. There must be greater decentralisation and flexibility in ICDS with local consultation to decide timings of Anganwadi Centres, menus etc.

Care Work as Decent Work: All workers providing care work, such as Anganwadi Workers and Helpers, ASHAs, should be provided with at least the minimum wage and a decent working conditions.

Mid-Day Meal should be extended to all children up to class XII. Local farmers and self-help groups should be given an opportunity to sell food items directly to schools for Mid-Day Meals where possible, as a means to stimulate the local economy.

Stop the systematic budget cuts and privatisation of services food and nutrition programmes of the government like ICDS, Mid-Day Meal etc.
Ban private contractors in all public feeding/food distribution programmes such as the ICDS, Mid-Day Meals and PDS.

Kitchen Gardens: Organic kitchen gardens must be promoted in schools and anganwadis to improve the nutrient content of the meals served in these institutions.

For Pregnant and Lactating Women
Community Meals: Provide free, hot and cooked nutritious midday meals for pregnant women, lactating mothers, homeless persons and the elderly in anganwadi centres (similar to programs introduced in Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana).

Maternity Entitlements under NFSA: The NFSA provides an entitlement of at least ₹6,000 for all pregnant and lactating mothers. The scheme to implement this currently is applicable only to the first birth, and entitles only ₹5,000. The scheme must be amended to ensure that there are no such conditionalities and all women are included. The amount of benefit must be increased (for example, it is ₹16,000 in Madhya Pradesh and ₹18,000 in Tamil Nadu). It must also be ensured that the instalments are paid without any delays.

Universal Maternity Entitlements: The Maternity Benefit Act currently covers only women in the organised sector. Women do paid and unpaid work at multiple sites simultaneously such as farms, forests, worksites, factories, markets, and home. Legal, programmatic and institutional provisions must be made to ensure maternity entitlements that is equivalent to at least minimum wages at prevalent rates for nine months for all women.

Special Packages
Community Kitchens in urban areas: Start subsidized community kitchens in all cities, towns and block headquarters (like Tamil Nadu’s Amma Canteens) and also in hamlets with high tribal populations.

Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups: Acknowledging the crisis of hunger and malnutrition amongst PVTGs, provide all the 75 identified PVTGs nationwide with doorstep delivery of a special free nutritional package (similar to the one provided to Rajasthan’s Sahariyas of 35 kg foodgrain, 2 kg of dal, 2 kg cooking oil and 1 kg of ghee every month along with monthly social pensions as introduced in Jharkhand).

Social Security Pensions
Universal Pensions: Provide unconditional universal social security pensions to all elderly above 60 years, differently-abled persons, single women and other vulnerable communities such as transgender persons (as initiated in Tamil Nadu) and PVTGs (as initiated in Jharkhand).
Increase Pensions: Increase the amount for social security pensions from monthly ₹200 to at least ₹3,000 or half the minimum wages (whichever is higher) and ensure that they are inflation-indexed.

National Rural Employment Guarantee Act
Double NREGA: Double the annual guarantee from 100 to 200 workdays per household.

Living wages: Index NREGA wage rates to Consumer Price Index Rural Labourers and ensure that they are not less than the minimum agricultural wage rates in all states.

Timely Payment: Ensure strict timely payment of wages within a fortnight, unemployment allowance to those who are not allotted work and compensation for delayed payment in accordance with the Act.

Urban Employment Guarantee Act: Enshrine and implement a National Urban Employment Guarantee Act (as implemented as a programme in Tripura) with a guarantee of at least 100 days per household for both unskilled and skilled jobs, suitable for urban contexts.

Right to Food Choice
Beef Ban: Remove bans on slaughter of cows on religious and other grounds.

Social Accountability
Grievance Redressal: Appoint State Food Commissions, District Grievance Redressal Officers and Vigilance Committees in all states, districts, blocks and fair-price shops and also ensure a mechanism so that social audits are regularly conducted for all food schemes.

Right to Information: Do not amend the Right to Information Act, but instead strength the state information commissions, appoint Information Commissioners, Lokpals and Lokayuktas and implement the penalty provisions of these laws.

Whistleblower protection law: Implement whistleblowers protection Act and create a conductive environment wherein people have easy access to information.

Agriculture
Minimum Support Price: Enact the Bill for Farmers’ Right to Guaranteed Remunerative Minimum Support Price pending in both houses of Parliament.

Land Reforms: Implement redistributive land reforms and stop forcible land acquisition.

Minimum Wages: Secure minimum wage of not less than Rs 18000 per month for all workers.

Encourage food production: Encourage food production through sustainable and equitable means, and ensure adequate food availability in all locations at all time.

World Trade Organization: Make sure that India does not agree to any restrictions imposed by the World Trade Organization on public stockholdings and press for re-negotiating the agreements in relation to agricultural subsidies in favour of developing countries.

Sustainable Farming: India should discontinue pesticides banned by other countries and over the next five years should completely phase out all synthetic pesticides. Fertilizer subsidies should be reduced and investment should instead be made in organic agriculture. There should be a total ban on genetically modified crops and other foods.

Right to livelihoods resources of the marginalised people
Safeguard land rights of adivasis by strong implementation the Forest Rights Act (FRA) 2006; appoint people’s representative at the district and block level with immediate effect.

Protect dalits from forceful evictions, allocate specially reserved land to the landless dalits, and create fast track courts for speedy resolution of land disputes.

Implement with letter and spirit The Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act, 2013.
 
Technology and Welfare
Prevent Aadhaar Exclusions: Ensure that no one is excluded because of Aadhaar to avail of their social security entitlements especially rations, pensions and NREGA – delink Aadhaar from all social welfare schemes.

Aadhaar: Delink Aadhaar from and amend Section 7 of the Act to ensure that Aadhaar is not made mandatory to avail of any social security entitlements including rations, pensions, schools and others

Technology should ensure welfares of people and not exclusion, marginalisation and pain.

Management Information System data should be accessible to people and should be in public domain.

Courtesy: Counterview.org
 

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India, unlike others, is a caste ridden feudal society. After the independence we promised to our people that we will have ‘Swaraj’, our ‘own rule’ but soon the entire slogan was converted into a Savarna Raj with least botheration about the permanent settlement of Dalits and Adivasis.

The Indian state promised that there are three ways to ’empower’ the people from these segments. The first one was political representation in the form of ‘reserved seats’ in Parliament, state assemblies and PR institutions. The second was affirmative action programme through fixing of quota in the central and state government jobs which till 1980s were never filled and only a legislation that seat vacant would only be filled by the candidates from reserved category that the situation changed a bit but there too efforts have been made to make the entire reservation system as redundant.

The third and the most important part was Comprehensive Land Reforms which were completely ignored by the political leadership of the country because it had the power to alter the power relations in our villages which Baba Saheb Ambedkar termed as ‘den’ of ‘ignorance, narrow mindedness and prejudices’. Fact of the matter is that even after 70 years of our independence, these things exists and perhaps growing more now. It is unfortunate that not only political leadership but also various organisations talking of Dalit Rights actually ignored this vital question which related to over 95% of our population and can always change the power equations in the villages. Land redistribution agenda should have been in the forefront of our political parties who swear by social justice and speak of the Bahujan movement and Samajwad. They should and must take up the issue now as if they fail to respond to this historical injustice, history will not forgive them.

A look at the atrocities on Dalits and Adivasis in India will reveal that the majority of cases relate to land. Whatever little land have been allotted to them is either under the litigation or forcibly possessed by the powerful castes including many intermediary castes. Without resolving the land questions, we can not even imagine peace in our society. Caste question is also related to non distribution of the natural resources and controlled by the so called powerful jaatis. Each one of it try to dominate the others in the ladder believing in the concept of ‘graded inequality’ as Baba Saheb Ambedkar described the entire village social system.

Ekta Parishad’s #Janandolan2018 is an attempt to bring back the original land agenda of Comprehensive Agrarian Reform. They have also revived the Gandhian social action and mobilisation. Time have passed now and the situation have changed. The issues need to be tackled and legacy of social action must be revived. Over twenty five thousands people predominantly Adivasis and Dalits are marching from Gwalior towards Delhi to get their demands met by the government. It need determination and mobilisation skills to bring so many people to one platform and making them walk in scorching heat but it give extremely important learning to all of us. To the credit of Ekta Parishad, we have delegations from so many states including North East, Kerala, Tamilnadu, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Maharastra, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Chhattishgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Jharkhand, Odisha and Rajasthan. I might have missed many others but the entire yatra is fascinating when you listen to people. There are Mushahar women from Bihar walking then you can also find, the Adivasis from Jharkhand, Chhattishgarh. Each one is carrying their own traditional food also. It also reflect that how much important this entire question of equal distribution of resources is which many of our friends just ignore or look down upon in utter contempt.

In 2012, the government of India actually agreed to various demands put up by Ekta Parishad and other organisations including bringing up a Homestead bill for all the homeless people by providing 10 decimal land to every homeless person. There was also a demand for Fast Track courts for the cases of land particularly related to Land Ceiling issues. The third was fair implementation of Forest Rights Act, distribution of five acres of agricultural land to landless people, recognition of women as farmers etc.

Though there are other demands too by Ekta Parishads but some of us who have been working on the land question through an Ambedkarite perspective too feel the need to make it more comprehensive because for us land struggle is an anti caste struggle also. If properly used, it can become a strong tool against the brahmanical hierarchy.

I have always mentioned that we had some very wonderful laws but where have they failed. It need to be understood that the feudal lords who drafted the Land Ceiling Act actually arranged everything to protect their interests. Hence, it is important for people of India to know why land ceiling act has been made to fail so that we all demand its removal. Several important points are important to note related to Land Ceiling and must be included in it.

First, all the land belonging to religious trusts must be included in Land Ceiling Laws. Like benefitting from the Income Tax acts too, these Trusts are industry themselves and feudal lords have protected their land under the pretext of some temples, mosques, Gurudwaras and other things.

Second, there is no ceiling on Gaushalas. You can have a gaushala in one thousand acre and attract no ceiling. The new gaubhakts are those who have all this and very easier way to evade ceiling. We demand it must be scrapped.

Third, the possession of land. Government and officials are happy to give us ‘data’ of how much land they have distributed but the fact is unless people take possession of the land, it is just a paper. A huge number of Dalits and adivasis as well as the MBCs have got these land entitlement but no efforts were made by the officers to ensure they get possession of their land.

Fourth, many of the communities have been living on land for years but they have no legal papers. It is easier for the powerful people to exploit them under the pretext that they would be thrown out of the village. Most of these belong to nomadic communities and hence they must be protected.

Fifth, the government must think of building a National Pasture corridore and allow communities to use it for grazing purposes. When you can make national corridor for all the sinking development let us think of it.

Sixth, Where is our Bhudan Land. How much was it distributed and who was it given. Many states have closed the Bhudan chapter but we must demand in all fairness as why Bhudan land was not distributed to people. In Telangana and Andhra, Bhudan land was given to Industries.
Protect our Common property Resources like village ponds, lakes, rivers, orchards, grazing lands , charagahs as they are people’s resources and allow communities to manage them.

The concept of Land Bank was to pull land from different places and give it to the landless people but today the government is using land bank to give it to Industries. We must demand moratorium on land acquisition.

Our forest regions must be demiliterised and Adivasis must be given access to their forests and use their knowledge and services for the protection of forests.

All those women and men who have left manual scavenging must be rehabilitated honorably and provided five acres of land as part of the rehabilitation package.

These are my thoughts on the issue. I compliment Ekta Parishad for taking up issues and hope they will continue to bring various social movements whether Gandhian, Ambedkarites, left or other community organisation on the issue and organise further consultations on the same. Land agenda should be converted into anti caste discrimination agenda and also our fight against untouchability. People have responded to call and the march is on. We dont know how this government deal with it but we know these are serious issues and we have not only to fight with the power but also with local feudal power structure which feel threatened with it.

Also important for all of to call for an upper limit of how much can a person can earn as well as purchase things. How much a company can buy our lands. Unless we decide about it, the one side we will have millions of hectare land in the hands of a very few people and more than 90% of our population will suffer. We must not create corporate monopolies on natural resources. It is time, we take these issues among our people, larger civil society, social movements, academia and political leaders who are serious on the issue. The country will sink further if corporate monopolies on our essential things remain unchecked hence a demand for land reform or agrarian reform will remain incomplete and farce if we dont call for building up a national commission and fixing up a limit on land purchase for the commercial or professional purposes in the name of development. You cant give people anything if you dont restrict corporate monopolies and fix up their limit to buy and earn things.

Vidya Bhushan Rawat is a social and human rights activist. He blogs at www.manukhsi.blogspot.com twitter @freetohumanity Email: vbrawat@gmail.com

Courtesy: https://countercurrents.org
 

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On Friday, the Union Agriculture Minister Radha Mohan Singh informed the Parliament that during the period of January-April, 2017, Maharashtra has reported 855 cases of farmer suicides.  In his written reply, Singh explained that the central government has adopted a strategy for enhancing farmers’ income by making farming more viable and generate profits for farmers on a sustainable basis. Junior Agriculture Minister Parshottam Rupala also added that the state is implementing a pilot project in Yavatmal and Osmanabad districts of Amravati and Aurangabad division to provide some relief to the farmers and reduce the number of suicides.

One might say that the number of suicides has taken a significant dip this year, if compared to 1,023 cases of farmers’ suicides recorded for the period of January-April 2016. But the reality on the ground begs to differ. While the police had opened fire during a farmers’ protests in Madhya Pradesh’s Mandsaur district last month, the agricultural minister was busy doing yoga in Bihar with Ramdev Baba. This, along with the false promises of farm loan waiversy theBJP-led  government, has sparked farmer protests all over Maharashtra. Over 40,000 farmers have taken part in the conventions organised by All India Kisan Sabha (AIKS) throughout Northern Maharashtra, Konkan, Vidarbha, Marathwada and Western Maharashtra. They also felt betrayed by the BJP government

The last  leg of the convention, led by the trade union leader and social activist Dr Baba Adhav on July 23, has called for Chakka Jaam, a statewide road blockade. Lakhs of farmers will block national highways and state highways all across Maharashtra on August 14.

Earlier on May 11, Maharashtra Rajya Kisan Sabha had held a statewide convention named “Aasood” where the AIKS state general secretary Dr Ajit Nawale had placed certain demands on behalf of the struggling farmers, major among which was a complete loan waiver to farmers who own less than 25 acres of dry land and less than 10 acres of irrigated land.

The other major demands included, the hand over of forest lands, temple/shrine land, pasture land with pattas to the cultivating peasants, scrap the pro-corporate Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana and provide comprehensive insurance security to all farmers, provide pension of Rs 3000 per month to poor and middle peasants and agricultural workers aged 60 and above; ensure at least 200 days of work and minimum wage of Rs 350 per day to agricultural workers under MNREGA.

Aasood convention also demanded to scrap the river-joining project signed by the Maharashtra and Gujarat state governments, and instead conserve the water of the west-flowing rivers and devise schemes to give it to Thane, Palghar, Nashik and other drought-prone districts, The local peasants had to given soem priority while distributing water from the several dams built in Adivasi areas and the government should make adequate financial provision for irrigation and power.

Courtesy: Newsclick.in
 

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• Kisan Mukti Yatra (Farmers Freedom March) reaches Agra; demands that Yogi government declare loan waiver for all farmers in UP.
• Yatra will reach New Delhi tomorrow.
• Countrywide support to the yatra.
• Kisan leaders, including Nityendra Manav, Kishan Lal Guruji, Gopalchand Arya, Rameshwar Singh Shekhawat and Vikram Yadav will also attend the public meeting at Jantar Mantar.
• All India Co-ordination Committee of Agitating Farmers appeals to all MPs: before going to Parliament, come to Jantar Mantar which is just 5 minutes away to extend your support to the farmers’ demands and to pay homage to the “martyrs” of Mandsaur.

 
The Kisan Mukti Yatra (Farmers Freedom March) which started from Mandsaur in MP on July 6 will be reaching Jantar Mantar in New Delhi tomorrow. On entering Uttar Pradesh on Sunday, the yatra was joined by the Kisan Adhikar Yatra which was launched in UP. The yatra will travel through Haryana on Monday and thousands of farmers led by kisan leaders from different states will enter the nation’s capital to highlight their two main demands: waiver of all loans to farmers, fair price for farm produce.
 
On Sunday the Yatra proceeded from Bishangarh. The yatris were received at Ladakbaas and Pavta by local kisan leaders. Thereafter they reached Kotputli where a public meeting was held. Addressing the gathering, Yogendra Yadav said in an appeal to all MPs: “When representatives of suffering farmers from across the country would be at Jantar Mantar to press their demands and pay homage to the six farmer “martyrs” of Mandsaur, our MPs will be inside Parliament just 5 minutes away deliberating over how best to serve the people. There are many MPs who have themselves struggled for farmers demands; many see themselves as well-wishers of farmers. So, the least the farmers will expect from the MPs is that they come to Jantar Mantar which is nearby, bow before the farmers who feed the nation, understand their problems and demands, pay homage to the “martyrs” of Mandsaur and help strengthen the movement to save agriculture, farmers and the nation”.

                At Alwar, the kisan leaders addressed the media. The co-ordinator of the All India Farmers’ Co-ordination Committee, VM Singh said that only those will rule the country who ensure loan waivers to farmers and fair price for farm produce. He demanded that the Yogi government should declare full loan waiver for all farmers in UP.

Dr Suneelam deplored the fact that farmers have to face lathi charge and even bullets every time they take to agitation. He demanded that in all future cases of firing on farmers the policemen responsible must be charged with murder. He also called for a law prohibiting the use of bullets against farmers’ agitations.

While condemning the arrest of farmers from Tamilnadu who were agitating outside the PMO, the spokesperson of the Bharatiya Kaisan Union, Gora Singh, said sooner or later the Prime Minister will have to talk to the farmers.

While talking to the media, the general secretary of the Bharatiya Kisan Mahasabha, Raja Ram Singh said the Prime Minister should break his silence over the police firing on farmers in Mandsaur.   

The Kisan Mukti Yatra has been launched by kisan leaders from 15 states across the country.

Recalling the police firing at Mandsaur, remembering the heritage of the Bardoli and Kheda struggles, the Kisan Mukti Yatra has embraced the dispossessed farmers of Narmada, the adivasi women of Vyara and the Koonch Yatra of Mehsana’s Dalit organisations.

The Yatra which started from Mandsaur on July 6 will reach Jantar Mantar on July 18 after traversing six states en route. Thousands of farmers will then sit on an indefinite dharna at Jantar Mantar, supported by over 200 farmers organizations from all over India.     
 

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