HELD in Navi Mumbai on June 8-9, 2013, the working committee meeting of All India Agricultural Workers Union (AIAWU) was attended by M V Govindan Master, S Thirunavakkarassu and B Venkat (vice presidents), A Vijayaraghavan (general secretary), Suneet Chopra, Hannan Mollah and Kumar Shiralkar (joint secretaries), C T Krishnan, T Chathu, A Padmanabhan and K Komalakumari (Kerala), M Venkateswarlu and N Ilaiah (Andhra Pradesh), G Mani (Tamilnadu), Prakash Choudhary, Baba Saheb Sarvade (Maharashtra), Gurmesh Singh (Punjab), Ambika Prasad Misra and Brijlal Bharti (Uttar Pradesh), Bhola Prasad Diwakar (Bihar), Babu Bhadra (Tripura) and Nityanand Swamy (Karnataka). P Ramayya (president) presided over the meeting.

Suneet Chopra placed the condolence resolution to pay homage to K Ummar Master, Lonappan Nambadan, C O Poulose and Sankaran (Kerala), Hanumamma (Karnataka), Badal Sarkar, Hari Shankar Sil (Tripura), Potabhari Bhaguji, Pitabhai Thakre, Hussain Dada Mian and Prabhu Bansode (Maharashtra), Vasudev Singh (Bihar), Dharamdas Adampuri and Jagjit Singh Layalpuri (Punjab), and Sudipto Gupta, a SFI leader in West Bengal.

AIAWU general secretary A Vijayaraghavan placed the report. He explained the seriousness of the economic crisis facing the country today, especially in rural India. The failure of neo-liberal policies and their support to the Indian and foreign corporate houses is now obvious to all. The central government refuses to recognise this fact and continues with a policy of making the poor and rural masses pay the price for the plunder and profligacy of the rich. He noted how in the last session of parliament three important legislations for the poor --- the Food Security Bill, the Land Alienation Bill and the Land Acquisition, Resettlement and Rehabilitation Bill --- could not be passed as the Congress refused to sack its corrupt ministers while the BJP refused to allow the parliament to function. On the other hand, this too is a fact that these two parties got together and passed a pro-rich neo-liberal budget without a detailed debate. In these conditions the rural poor and agricultural labour will have to struggle for ensuring proper implementation of the public distribution system, of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme and other employment schemes, and also to press for land for survival and housesites to live. A total of 12 comrades took part in the discussion on general secretary’s report.

Hannan Mollah then explained the future programme and Suneet Chopra spelt out the detailed programme for the Hindi class to be held in Chandigarh on July 12-13, 2013. The president concluded the meeting with a vote of thank to the Maharashtra state committee of the union who hosted the meeting.

The main decisions of the AIAWU working committee meeting are as below:

1) The most important task before the union is to ensure the success of its eighth all-India conference, to be held at Warangal in Andhra Pradesh by the end of 2013. In preparation for it, all state units are expected to pay maximum attention to their membership and to the successful completion of their unit, lower, district and state level conferences latest by October end.

2) The conference will be held with delegacy on the basis of 2012-13 membership. The working committee has extended the last date for enrolment to reach the centre to July 31, 2013.

3) The months of June, July, August and September must be dedicated to an all-India campaign from the village to state level on the issues of price rise, food security, employment, wages, land and housesites, to culminate in action programmes from the village to the district level in July and August. Each state must plan its campaign and action in state committee meetings in June. Every effort must be made to secure concrete benefits for the people under our banner while taking up the issue of corruption in the implementation of the pro-people laws and schemes.

4) Conventions of women agricultural labour must be conducted to take up women’s pressing demands.

5) In the month of July we should undertake struggles to ensure land and housesites to dalits who have for so long been kept isolated from land ownership in their ancestral villages.

6) The Hindi class will be held on July 12 and 13, 2013 at Chandigarh. The delegations will be as follows: Punjab 30, Maharashtra, Bihar and Uttar Pradesh 20 each, Haryana and Rajasthan 15 each, Orissa, Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat 5 each.

The AIAWU office bearers are planning to hold a general council meeting by the end of September or early October.