 Hello and welcome to NewsClick. The working class and the peasantry in the country is facing massive crisis. In the last four years of Modi regime, there have been various anti-farmers, anti-labour policies that have crossed destruction for the working class and the peasantry. In coming one or two months, the country is going to witness two major protests. One is on 9th August, which is on call of All India Kisan Sabha. The call is for Jail Bharu at all the district headquarters. Then the another protest is on 5th of September in Delhi at Parliament Street. The 5th September rally has been jointly called by the peasant and the labour organisations, primarily AIKS and CITU. To discuss about these movements, we are joined by Ashok Dhawle, who is president of All India Kisan Sabha. Welcome to NewsClick, sir. So as we all know, we have witnessed Kisan launch in Maharashtra and now the Jail Bharu call of 9th August, which is, I think, All India call. And there has also been a call to collect signatures and deposit at all district headquarters. So can you throw some light on what is this programme about? You know now the actual stark reality in the country today is that the last four years of the Modi government, of the BJP RSS, have shown one thing beyond any doubt and that is that this government is by far the most anti-farmer, anti-worker, anti-people, pro-corporate and communal government that independent India has ever seen in the last 70 years. As you correctly said, the farmers, agricultural workers and the working class are bearing the brunt of this policies of this government, the neoliberal policies, which have been continuing for the last now nearly 30 years. But they have been speeded up tremendously under the ages of this government. And therefore, the All India Kisan Sabha decided many months ago that the time has come to really, you know, attack these policies tooth and nail. As you said, the huge farmer struggles in Rajasthan, in Maharashtra, Karnataka, Himachal and other places. After that we decided that some All India movement is the need of the hour. And therefore, we took two decisions regarding this. One is that on five major demands of the peasantry all over India, we have launched a 10 crore signature campaign all over the country. The All India Kisan Sabha, which are the five major demands. Number one is a complete loan waiver for the peasantry. Second implementation of the Swaminathan Commission recommendations, especially the one regarding giving one and a half times the cost of production for the MSP for crops and also a proper mechanism for procurement. Third one was very important, that is the question of land rights, land rights for the landless, which includes the implementation of the Forest Rights Act for the tribal peasants and also includes the resistance to forced land acquisition. Both important point is regarding increased pensions to poor and middle farmers and to agricultural workers. The fifth demand is a comprehensive crop insurance scheme as against the Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bhima Yojana, which is a fraud meant for the insurance companies and not for the farmers. Now, on these five issues, a 10 crore signature campaign is going on all over the country getting a very good response in all the states and we decided on the 9th of August, we will have a complete jail borough agitation all over the country in every district where we will be submitting these signatures to the district collector to be given to the Prime Minister of India because that memorandum is addressed to the Prime Minister naturally. And after submitting these signatures, they will be a huge jail borough agitation all over the country. It is a very good thing that the CITU and the All India Agricultural Workers Union has also given their support to the 9th of August jail borough call. And why did we take 9th of August? 9th of August as we know is a very historic day in the annals of the freedom movement. The day when Mahatma Gandhi in 1942 gave a call to the British imperialists to quit India. So, similarly the All India Kishan Sabha C2 and the All India Agricultural Workers Union are together because we expect lakhs of farmers and workers, agricultural laborers will take part on the 9th of August all over the country. And therefore we are going to give a call to the BJP RSS government of Narendra Modi that it is now time that you should also quit India and slay Modi Sarkar Gaddi Chodo that is the slogan of the 9th August jail borough. I think it will be a massive sort of this thing a call and the response and we expect that lakhs of farmers, workers, etcetera will really come in the streets in every district of the country and issue this clarion call to the Modi government that is high time that now you quit the country. Now, there is another project that is going to take place in Delhi which is on 5th of September the Masdoor Kishan Sanghash Rally called by CITU, AIKS, Agricultural Workers Union and actually as far as my information is there that in past many years this is happening for the first time that all these three big sectors are coming together and raising their demands and if you look at the demand charter it is not just limited to presentry and the working class it talks about broader issues of communism of education of gender violence and all that. So, where was the foundation laid for this entire protest of September and what are demands that are going to be raised in this protest? Yeah, as you said this is really a very historic protest which will take place on the 5th September in Delhi. For the first time after independence in fact all these three organizations have come together at the national level at the state level yes they have come together earlier in different states etc. But at the national level the CITU, AIKS and the AIAWU have come together for the first time and have decided to have a common huge Kishan Masdoor Sanghash Rally in Delhi. Now, this is because basically we believe in the concept of worker peasant unity and that is the fundamental basis on which we have decided to have this 5th September rally where all these sections the working class the presentry agricultural workers which as we know actually comprise more than 90 percent of the population of India that is what all of them are. Them coming together is really a very unprecedented and a very historic occasion and we expect lakhs of workers, farmers and agricultural laborers to converge in Delhi from all the states all throughout the country a very big campaign is going on today all over India to see that this 5th September rally is also made a resounding success. Now in this rally apart from the peasant demands that I told you about 9th August there are some major demands of the working class and the agricultural workers which I will just quickly outline and then as you said the wider issues that also will come to. During the working class some of the very major demands that the CITU is making in this and very rightly so number one is that all workers in the country must get a minimum wage of 18000 rupees per month that is number one. Secondly the whole Modi regime and many of the state governments led by the BJP and also may be other parties they have been now on a spree of revising the labor laws to help the owners and against the workers. So therefore that is another very prime demand that we are making roll back all the anti labor legislation that has been passed in various states in the last four years and which is also mooted by the Modi government at the center that is second. Third we are saying that the whole question of contractual labor that is also very major problem everywhere in the country today permanent labor is being phased out contract labor is being brought in with a very pittance of a wage. So therefore that also we are calling for a stop to contractorization. So these are some of the things in the question of unorganized workers for social security for them. For example especially the women's scheme workers Asha workers Anganwadi workers also the midday meal scheme and all that they are being actually exploited tremendously and therefore we are demanding that they also be made this thing as government servants that is the another major demand that also all over the country is being raised. These are the working class demands some of the major ones regarding agricultural labor one is we are demanding comprehensive legislation for agricultural workers throughout the country. This is a demand that has been hanging fire for the last several years no government neither of the congress nor of the BJP has ever really implemented that demand. So therefore that is one we are saying. Secondly the Manarega which we know that that was actually brought in as a result of the pressure of the 61 left members of parliament. That is one major step that the earlier UPA government had to take the second major step that was there as a result of left pressure was the forest rights act. So therefore Manarega we have seen in the last four years under the Modi regime they are actually out to undermine it. They already cut the outlay on it by almost half and therefore we are seeing that instead of actually expanding it we are seeing that the thing is contracting tremendously number of mandates have become less wages are not being given there is a tremendous backlog of wages for the work etc. So we are calling for a very stringent implementation and expansion of Manarega and also a amendment in the law to see that it is also implemented in the urban areas of the country. So these are the demands of the agricultural workers that we are demanding. Apart from that as you said there are certain major general demands. Number one for example is a thing about price rise the expansion of the public distribution system now we see in Jharkhand we have seen in UP we have seen in many places. In fact in many of the districts in the country especially which are tribal majority or we have a large proportion of Dalits we have a situation like the farmer suicides in which more than 3 lakh farmers have committed suicide all over the country in the last 25 years of neoliberal policies. Similarly another very shocking thing is that lakhs of small children boys and girls have actually died due to starvation and malnutrition in India. This happens in Orissa, Jharkhand, Maharashtra, Chaktisgarh, Madhya Pradesh so many states where this has happened. We have seen women now also dying because of starvation in Jharkhand, UP etc. cases have come up. This is because of the breakdown of the public distribution system the attachment of Aadhar and all these other things biometric all these things are played apart and therefore this is also a very major thing that is happening. Now this public distribution system is another one major thing that we are concentrating on as part of the demands. Another thing we are also saying redistributive land reforms should also be there because unless land reforms really come into play and are implemented as was implemented by the left led governments of Kerala they are now even being West Bengal and Tripura but all over the country nothing else has been done beyond these three states. So that is also one very fundamental demand that we are also raising. Another thing is regarding the whole question of education, health and employment for all sections of the people we see today the Maratha agitation reservation we are seeing we saw the Patel agitation in Gujarat we saw the Jat agitation in Haryana Rajasthan etc. Why are these things actually occurring they are the root cause of it is one the agrarian crisis, second the soaring unemployment, third the attacks on education and its privatization. So therefore unless these policies are actually rolled back these agitations are going to ferment even more and therefore a very sea change is required radical change in the policies regarding education, employment and health is the need of the hour. One more very fundamental thing that is a bedrock I would say of both the 9th August and the 5th September agitations is the very tremendous fight that we are all launching and it is waging against the communal monster and that is actually one of the most serious things that is happening in the country today we are seeing every day mob lynching every day practically in different parts of the country and we saw the Supreme Court also intervening and saying that what is this going on they asked for a law within a month but nothing the Modi government has done and all over communal riots communal incidents are being engineered so that religion and caste are being tried to be you know put this thing to be able to get a electoral majority. Now this is a very very selfish point of view it is very much destructive of both democracy and secularism in India. For example not only that they are not bringing the law if you look at the comments of their ministers of the BJP MLA somebody says that if you eat beef you will be lynched or if you do not do this this will happen every Hindu should produce 5 children otherwise you will become a minority. So it is like there is a systematic propagation which is going on by the BJP RSS when it comes to issues pertaining to communalism they are trying to create Hindu-Muslim divide basically. So let us come back to there is also a talk about a long march to Delhi which is supposed to take place can you throw some light on that part. Yeah but before that one more point just in the earlier question see one is the communal divide between Hindus and Muslims. Second section which they are targeting very badly is also the Dalits that we should see right from Una, Bhima, Koregaon, Saharanpur we are seeing and now the schedule caste and schedule tribe prevention of atrocities act Supreme Court has diluted it the Modi government has not brought in anything you know to strengthen it again no legislation no ordinance nothing. So this is also very very major point that we are taking up in the 9th August and the 5th September actions. Now regarding the November long march of the this thing to parliament see the idea behind this is all sections of society are actually at the receiving end of the Modi regime except the corporates except the multinationals. See they have targeted everybody they have targeted the working class the peasantry agricultural workers Dalits, Adivasis, Muslims and also the large section of Hindus who are of the normal common people all of them they have been targeting the only ones that they are helping is the corporate lobby and the multinational lobby the imperialist lobby in the country. What we thought was that a very very important thing should be a much more broad kind of mobilization which will of course include a large number of farmers workers agricultural workers etc. but it will also attract a large section of the students youth the middle class which is also actually at the receiving end of all these policies and therefore the idea was that in the month of November from 10 directions in Delhi we want to start a kind of a long march for 3 days and that will be a long march to Delhi from all the 10 roads that come into Delhi right from different parts of the country people will walk for about 100 150 kilometers. We are planning tentatively to start it on the 28th of November which is the death anniversary of Mahatma Jyotirao Phule who was not only a very great social reformer against caste etc. but he was one of the first champions of the peasantry of India he wrote a book which was called the Vipkord of the Peasant you know so therefore 28th November and the march will culminate in Delhi on the 30th of November that is the tentative program now depends on the election schedule and etc. of Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh let us see what happens there but in that all these sections which are talked about including the middle class sections etc. we are planning teachers, doctors, lawyers, engineers all of them in support of the peasantry and the workers that is what we want to mobilize and students and youth in very large numbers women in very large numbers that also we would like to mobilize. Now in this we are going to make one major demand and that is for a three week special session of parliament to discuss only the agrarian crisis which is actually the foremost national problem in India today and therefore this is a kind of a thing that we have in mind this will of course be a very very broad coalition. It will not be only the Kisan Sabha or only the CITU or only the agricultural workers union already the all India Kisan Sanghar summoned by Samiti which is a body of more than 190 farmers organizations has supported this idea Bhumi Adhikar Andhulan we are going to appeal to it the Jeja, Ekta Janadhikar Andhulan we will appeal to that also to join in in this thing. So therefore many other Dalit organizations now ex-servicemen have also come in a big way in the 9th August thing etc. So all of them we are trying to get together. This will be a very huge mobilization and a very broad mobilization which we are trying to get together. So as far as all India democratic women's association is concerned IDWA has also extended to the extended support to the 5th September call and they are themselves having massive agitation on 4th of September on different issues. So how do you feel about that? Yes the all India democratic women's association has been continuously fighting all over the country on 3 major issues. Number 1 is of course the unspeakable atrocities against women which are increasing all over the country and especially so in the last 4 years of the Modi government we saw Kathoa, we saw Unnao, we saw many other places Jharkhand and therefore the IDWA has decided on the 4th of September a huge rally of thousands of women will be brought to Delhi from all over the country and they will have this rally before Parliament Street on 3 major issues. Number 1 the maximum of the growing atrocities against women. Number 2 is the question of hunger and the public distribution system breakdown which I have just talked about now and thirdly on the question of women's unemployment and the advice also given a call to all these women to stay back one more day to take part in the Madhur Kisan Sangar rally on the 5th of September. So if you summarize everything it looks like that there is going to be a massive agitation part that is going to be taken by various movements and I think struggle is the only way forward right? Yes that is true. So that is the point where we would like to leave this discussion and we will be covering these movements extensively as like we have always covered. Thank you a lot for giving your time. Thanks a lot. We had Ashok Dhavle president of All India Kisan Sabha explaining about these different movements and their demands. Keep following news click to know more about these movements protests and their regular coverage.