Dear Editor,
Television news channels keep referring the current mass agitation at the Delhi borders as a protest by Punjab farmers. This is deliberate disinformation. It contradicts the fact that the protestors include tens of thousands from Haryana, Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand. Thousands more from Rajasthan are their way to the Delhi border. Delegations of kisan organisations have come from numerous distant regions including Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh and Tamilnadu.
The aim of the deliberate disinformation is to create the false impression that liberalisation and privatisation of agricultural trade and storage is being welcomed by the majority of people, while only a “privileged few” who gain from the existing system are opposing this reform program.
This is similar to the propaganda that only a minority of workers are opposing the new Labour Codes, namely, those who are covered by the existing labour laws. Such propaganda ignores the fact that when the most organised section of the working class is attacked and deprived of rights, it harms the entire class. While workers’ unions have been demanding that the rights of all workers must be protected by law, the capitalists and the government want to do away with even the limited protection that exists.
Who is to blame for the fact that public procurement at Minimum Support Prices is taking place only in a few regions of the country including Punjab, Haryana and western Uttar Pradesh? It is the Central Government and its procurement policy which is to blame. The Kisan Morcha is demanding that public procurement at MSPs should be organised in all regions and covering all agricultural produce. The corporate houses and the Central Government are arguing that because the existing public procurement system benefits only some and not all peasants, it must be eliminated!
In the face of various attempts of the ruling class to divide and rule, it is essential for workers and peasants to uphold the principle that an attack on one is an attack on all.
I would like to applaud the efforts of the Communist Ghadar Party of India in consistently explaining the true content of the government’s reform program and the struggles being waged by workers and peasants.
Yours etc.,
Ajit Kumar
Kanpur