New Delhi, January 3; INN: The All India Kisan Council held in Delhi on 17th and 18th December, 2018 gave a call for a rural hartal on 8th and 9th January, 2019 in solidarity with the call of United Trade Unions for a General Strike on the two days. The AIKS along with the All India Agricultural Workers’ Union and like-minded organisations will actively campaign on demands of the peasantry and rural poor, hold protest demonstrations, Rail Roko, Road Roko and bring rural India to a standstill against the anti-peasant, anti-worker BJP Government.
The last four and a half years of the NarendraModi led BJP Government has witnessed an aggressive pursuit of neoliberal economic policies and mounting burdens on the peasantry as well as the toiling masses. Attacks on the hard won rights of the workers has been accompanied by increasing casualisation, cuts in social security measures as well as ever increasing burden of price rise, increase in health and education expenses. Agrarian crisis has also intensified leading to increased farm suicides, indebtedness and migration. All promises made by the Prime Minister and BJP Government to the peasantry have been betrayed. The peasantry are being dispossessed and forced to sell their labour in the unorganised sector under precarious conditions. This situation calls for greater coordinated actions between the working class and the peasantry.
The working and the peasantry have had coordinated united actions in an unprecedented show of solidarity on the occasion of 9th August Jail Bharo and 5th September MazdoorKisanSangharsh Rally. The CITU took active part in the KisanMukti March on 29th and 30th November, 2018. Taking this solidarity forward AIKS has given the call for the rural hartal, Road and Rail Roko programmes highlighting the burning problems of the peasantry, synchronising it with the Strike Call of the Workers. The BhumiAdhikarAndolan has also extended support to the Strike and will take active part. AIKS calls upon all units to work for the success of this historic Strike call in coordination with like-minded organisations.
