 Welcome to NewsClick, we have with us Comrade Krishna Prasad, Finance Secretary of the All India Kisan Sabha. He is going to talk to us about the agrarian crisis facing the country currently in the context of Narendra Modi inviting a cooperative farming into the country at recently in the World Food India Conference held in Delhi. Welcome to NewsClick, Comrade. Comrade, if you see that in India there are farmers are in a crisis and there are also protests that are happening in the context of, you know, on a large scale you see demonetisation has affected them, there is input cause that have risen and there are suicides that have been increasing. What do you think is the crisis affecting our country? Actually Narendra Modi is not requesting cooperative farming. It is the corporate, actually it is contract farming. So it is a policy announcement by the NDA government in the last budget, 2017-18. They said a model contract farm law will be introduced in all states and the first budget of this government in 2015-16 they announced 100% foreign direct investment in agriculture and retail. And they are now concentrating on food processing. So what they are thinking is that on food processing they would be able to bring a large change, a sea change by the intervention of the foreign direct investment and the contract farming with the presentry which is untrue. Never in India or wherever in there you can see this contract farm is going to help the petty producer. In India around 85-87% of the farmers are marginal or small. So that means because contract farming also the capitalist would need large land holdings and if this model has to become a viability that means all these farmers have to be, I mean have to leave agriculture is it not? No actually what is happening today is every day 2085 farmers are quitting agriculture because agriculture has become economically unviable under the capitalist especially the under the neoliberal regime. And you see in 1991 the percentage of the land less was 24% age. Now it has gone up to 44% age. So almost it is doubled within two decades of the neoliberal policies implementation and another aspect is the properization. So land scale properization, indebtedness, the suicide and the migration from rural to urban. And one thing which we can notice now is that earlier the demand for higher price 50% above, minority price 50% above cost of production which was a recommendation of MS Aminathan commission. So this was made or demanded by sections from certain regions. Now across the country, across the region, across the crops, from everywhere it has become a unanimous demand and also freedom from indebtedness. So these two demands are coming up from everywhere whether it is from Chattisgarh, Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Kerala, Tamil Nadu or Bengal and Asam. Why it is happening so? Because of the intensification of capitalist exploitation. Capitalism is advancing towards agriculture and agriculture is accused due to this exploitation and the growing expenditure for cost of cultivation and also cost of life. The root cause of it is the lack of land reform. So now also we can see around 5% of the landholders of the upper what to say size they are holding 58% of the cultivatable land. So this inequality that is growing in such a situation the petty producers are unable to sustain in agriculture and they are become more and more proliferates or workers. They are losing cattle, they are losing land, they are losing everything and they are forced to migrate as a migrant work. The proliferation of the peasantry. This is what the communist manifesto Marx and Engels very clearly was indicating under the capitalism what is going to happen and Leninus very correctly stated this that petty production cannot sustain under capitalism and they will lose everything. So this is the stage today all over the country and this shows the entire economy needs a system change. Without a systemic change you cannot move. So this change is needed not only by the farmer or the peasant but also by the capitalist class. That way they are trying to bring a new system of a contract farming and 100% FDI and they feel it will be a solution for the problem but unfortunately it cannot be and it will not be. Narendra Modi and his team who are leading the government is totally on a wrong path. What do you think could be an alternative so that this section of farmers for them farming can be a viable option? You see the studies welled over shows what is the crisis in agriculture today. You can consider that now under capitalism a modern industrial society is emerging and agro processing industries are an important role to play in that. And through the agro processing and marketing only the agriculture can be modernized and in such a situation what is happening today in India is the Indian capitalism is failing in undertaking this responsibility. They are more and more in lucrative areas of real estate, hotel business, tourism. So they are not entering into the agriculture at all. What they feel is that let the foreign capital come into it with a 100% FDI this is what they are saying. But on the other hand the studies all over the world shows out of the total value of the consumer products made out of the raw agricultural producers only 10% of that value goes to the primary producer. That means the farmer and also agriculture worker. So where does this 90% of the remaining surplus goes that goes to the industrial processor, that goes to the market here, the middlemen, the transporters and also the advertisers media. So all these are sharing this amount. This is what is happening. Why it is so? Because the monopoly capital is having a domination of the agro processing industry and also market. So without entering into this area, this field, the farmers cannot pitch to the relationship in production in favor of the farmer. So this is a challenge in front of the farmer today and we should address that. And that is possible not through the contract farming but only through a corporate use farming. So is there an example that you can give so that the viewers and through them everybody is educated. For example, some small example, can you cite of cooperative farming which actually help the farmers which you are aware of. Let us take a new example which we are now doing in Kerala. For example on 29th of this month, last month, October 29th, the finance minister of Kerala, Dr. Thomas Heiser has come to Wynard. So he initiated a project. That project is the industrial poultry farm inauguration of the project by Brahmagiri Development Society which is a cooperative. Two young women agriculturists, cultivators, named Gina and Jeanie, they initiated that first project. The 2000 chicks, their old chicks has been given to them and they paid the money also and they are purchasing feed also from the Brahmagiri. So Brahmagiri is the cooperative which is extending help to facilitate the input supply and they fix that rate. Now after 35 days, they are taking that back with 11 rupees per kilo as an income to the farmer. Out of 2000 beds, they may be able to have an income of around 30,000 rupees per month. If it is in the contract farming under the corporate companies, it can be below 15,000 only, so they can double it. And now the Kerala government want to promote it. So the minister announced there for each and every bed, they will give 5 rupees for subsidy. Brahmagiri is a cooperative which has a policy of not profiteering out of this business. They are only facilitating. What is the surplus created? They will share with the farmer. That way they are able to give 11 rupees instead of 5 rupees or 6 rupees. So this can be a model. Now around 150 farmers have joined the federation. It's a poultry farmers federation. So these sort of federations or crop wise mobilizations, these are the key in giving the petty producer a strength to checkmate the corporate exploitation in the market and develop a cooperative alternative. But then if you want to extend it to a larger scale, the MNCs have the power and the money to advertise and take their produce to different markets. So is that also viable in a cooperative model? It depends. For example in Kerala you can see around 90% of the people consume meat and Kerala is having a very high income level, what's a life standard, so that that market is there with you. You need not to explore any market outside of Kerala as far as meat is concerned. Second thing is that the Kerala, the problem is of production. So petty producers are under economic unviability because of this exploitation so the production is not coming up. So if you can develop it, then the market is assured, then the question of the money. You are saying the money is with the corporates. No, money is with the people. Either people are not purchasing, if their purchasing capacity is not there, then the corporate products also will be under slowdown. The concept needs to be understood by the majority of the working class and the farming class and they should advance to have a change in the system. So in that context we're talking about the workers and the properization of the farmers and if you see now in 2011 census about 144.3 million agriculture labourers were there in 2011. That's a huge population. So what do you think should be the policies even in a cooperative model to also help the workers who are engaged in agriculture? You see India is a largely an agrarian country, agrarian economy and the agriculture has become unviable and the farmers are forced to become a worker and in such a situation the worker and the person alliance, the farmer worker alliance, that is very important. You see there is always a contradiction between the farmer, especially the rich farmer and the agriculture worker because the rich farmer want to reduce the workers wage and the worker always want to have an enhanced wage. So this is the contradiction between them but as far as the petty producers are concerned the middle class of farmers or the poor farmers are concerned they are agriculture workers also. So if they are coming together and they are exploring the possibility of cooperative farming and establish their own market and industry for example that was the resolution of agrarian question in India that is the base of the democratic revolution in India as far as the communist parties are concerned the left political movements are concerned their major area of aim of political intervention is to bring an agrarian revolution. So agrarian revolution is the axis of the democratic revolution so without having an alternative to agrarian revolution you cannot advance your political movement also. In the existing situation Narendra Modi also has come to power with a left leaning slogans. For example he only have given in 300 plus public rallies the slogan that if Vijaypees water to power then they will give 50% above cost of production as remuneration price to each crop. So this is what the left movement is demanding this is what Kishansumma was demanding then Modi has promised it but in the last three and half years rule he never fulfilled that. The same he said the freedom from indebtedness to all the farmers because under neoliberalism under the congress rule under the congress economic policy the farmers are the most exploited they are under indebtedness and the Modi has put a left slogan of freedom from indebtedness but under three and half years rule his finance minister says even a single penny will not be given to pay for a debt relief a loan waiver scheme. So this is the double speaking of the Vijaypees and those farmers who have watered Vijaypees to the power now they have been fired at and they have been killed by the police under the Vijaypees state governments for example Mansu the Vijaypees government did not had any consciousness problem in firing on the innocent farmers who have watered them to the power and this demonetization and also now the GST this is affecting badly the farmer so under such a situation the farming class is forced to come against the government policies that is what we are seeing in Maharashtra continuous struggle and in 13-14 days struggle in Rajasthan which have been forced to the government to succumb to the pressure of the farming community and anonsome land waiver so this is happening in Chattisgarh today happening in Madhya Pradesh today so this is all Vijaypeer rule state and in Maharashtra where Vijaypees under rule they are unable to contain the suicides the rights of suicides of the farmers 42% hike is there under the Vijaypees government there are peasant suicides so all this shows that farmer community the peasantry is ready ready for any sort of fight today so what it shows that all sections of the farmers whether they are under Congress whether Vijaypea or whether left oriented they are now ready to fight this economic policies here a question is there whether the Congress is willing to change the economic policy because this economic policy which Vijaypea government is implementing Congress is want owned by the Congress also and even today Congress is not ready to change it under 20th of November the farmers also are coming in big number in parliament street to fight so the worker and peasant the alliance and the struggle this is the only hope today that can force the Vijaypea and the Congress to change their economic policy and force the RSS and Vijaypea to withdraw and what to say to the national mainstream by upholding the democratic tradition and also secular tradition thank you sir the cooperative farming is the antidote to the farmers facing the crisis presently the alternative is in the farmers coming together forming cooperatives and giving a tough fight thank you for watching news click