Documents

Approach Towards Agrarian Programme

[Paper for discussion in the 13-14 February meeting of the activists in the peasant movement to be held at Nagpur in order to organise an all India organisation of the landless-poor peasants and agricultural workers — RS]

1.         Neo-colonial Agrarian Situation
Beginning with the Permanent Settlement of 1793, the various changes brought about in the agricultural sector by British rulers during the colonial period were mainly aimed at winning over the feudal forces , the landlords, money lenders and traders  associated with agriculture as their political allies on the one hand, and for furthering imperialist exploitation on the other. While the Zamindari system enabled them to win over the feudal forces, the Ryotwari system was convenient for commercializing and converting Indian agriculture as an appendage to the sprawling British industries. In spite of the superficial changes in old land  relations imposed  by colonialists and the monetary relations that took place as a result of the export oriented cash crop cultivation which converted India as a source of agricultural raw materials and natural resources during the colonial period, semi-feudal and pre-capitalist relations continued its dominance through out the length and breadth of the country.
The transformation from old colonialism to neocolonialism and the consequent transfer of power in 1947 to comprador bureaucratic bourgeois-land lord classes opened the country up for penetration of imperialist finance capital from all imperialist countries led by US imperialism. As a result, many changes in agrarian relations took place without basically altering the landlord system. The abolition of Zamindari system and fixing of land ceilings in different states did not lead to implementation of ‘land to the tiller’ slogan. The land ceiling proposed was flouted in practice through various methods allowing the landlords to own huge land holding’s far above the ceiling.  Even in states like Kerala and West Bengal where land reforms were implemented under CPI and CPI (M)-led governments, it was the intermediaries and the newly emerged land lord class who got the benefits. The neocolonial intention of such land reforms was the super-imposition of capitalist relations suited for facilitating the entry of imperialist capital and market on a large scale. The document On the Character of the Indian State adopted at the All India Special Conference of CPI (ML) aptly remarks: “In the agricultural sector along with the reforms like ceiling acts from above creating a new landlord class, green revolution, white revolution, introduction of modern inputs, increasing cash crop  cultivation, corporate farming, etc., were initiated, increasing the agricultural production and transforming the old semi-feudal, pre-capitalist production relations to a significant extent. Compared to the colonial phase, in the neocolonial phase imperialism is no longer trying to protect the old agrarian structure. As a result, feudalism is no longer the social base of imperialism.” Thus instead of the old feudal lords, new land lord class who combined pre-capitalist and capitalist methods of exploitation were effective vehicles for implementing the imperialist sponsored ‘green revolution’ in various parts of the country beginning with Punjab and Haryana.  In these areas, feudal relations were transformed and agricultural production took a capitalist form. While introducing capitalist mode of production and creating conditions for the entry of modern technology and agricultural inputs, the ‘green revolution’ paved the way for overall land concentrations with about 60% land held by the landlords constituting less than 10% of population linked to agriculture.  This neocolonial onslaught in agriculture intensified the unevenness in agrarian sector and contradictions in the countryside. Vast majority of the peasants, the real tillers including the adivasis, dalits and oppressed sections continued to remain landless. Together with the emergence of the new class of capitalist farmers, big sections of poor and landless peasants have been transformed in to agricultural labourers, a phenomenon that got strengthened in direct proportion to the intensification of neo-colonisation and penetration of imperialist and corporate capital in agriculture.
The advent of imperialist globalization since the beginning of 1990s has further sharpened all these contradictions in the agrarian sector. Corporatisation of agriculture and corporate land grabbing in the name of various neocolonial projects such as SEZs , townships and agribusinesses by MNCs and speculative giants have  intensified land concentration through out the country leading to further destitution and pauperization of the landless poor peasants and agricultural workers who constitute the real peasantry and their further displacement from land. Even erstwhile land ceiling acts are repealed to facilitate the land grab by speculative finance. That is, in addition to the already existing reactionary land relations that denied land to the real tillers, the ever-intensifying land grab by speculative finance capital in both urban and rural areas has led to an unprecedented land concentration in the hands of parasitic classes. Corporate and contract farming led by agri-business companies are mounting. Along with the land question, imperialist and corporate market control over agricultural inputs and output through various price and exim policies is also threatening to peasants.  WTO dictated agricultural policies including anti-peasant import, credit and pricing policies coupled with the curtailment of state support programs such as subsidies and public procurements have led to mass suicides of peasants throughout the country. Due to the liberalization in agriculture, apart from the devastation of tens of millions of poor peasants, the middle peasants and even a section of the rich peasants are also in crisis.
2.         Peasant Problem and Class Line of Peasantry
In this context, it is essential to define as to what constitute the peasant problem from a class perspective. By peasant question, Lenin and Mao Tsetung, had always meant the problem of the class of real tillers of soil who constitute the vast majority of population in the countryside. In the specific context of India, the Path of Indian Revolution adopted at the All India Special Conference of CPI (ML) opines:-
 “This class the real tillers of the land constitute majority of the population comprising 50 to 60% in different areas according to concrete conditions, and include the adivasis, dalits and most backward and oppressed sections of society. They include the poor peasants, share croppers in areas where semi-feudal relations still persist, those who have taken land for tilling under lease, agricultural workers who include large numbers of migrant workers and those who are engaged in a variety of unorganized sectors, handicraftsmen, peddlers, etc.
 “As Mao Tsetung stated the peasant problem is essentially their problem. So when peasantry is mentioned in general it constitutes these sections, not the middle peasants and rich peasants as understood not only by CPI (M), but also increasingly by many of the so called revolutionary sections, even ‘Maoists’. Agrarian revolution with land to the tiller slogan means creating conditions to revolutionize the agrarian relations by making this class the owner of the agricultural land, as a first step towards cooperative and collective farming.”
Therefore, in essence, resolution of the peasant question implies serving the class interests of landless poor peasants and agricultural workers by putting an end to the domination of imperialist-comprador capital and landlord class along with other parasitic sections like usurers, speculators and big traders in the agrarian sector. During the colonial period too, revolutionary transformation of land relations in favour of the actual tillers of the soil had been the perspective held by the Communist Party which implied  abolition of feudal and semi-feudal and all pre-capitalist relations and protection of the class interests of landless-poor peasants and agricultural workers through revolutionary land reforms. The Telengana and Tebhaga movements as well as numerous other revolutionary peasant struggles across the country aroused the peasant masses and oppressed sections including adivasis and dalits to challenge the feudal system continuing in different forms for centuries.  These heroic struggles could not reach their revolutionary goal as the revisionist CPI leadership earlier and the neo-revisionist CPI (M) leadership later embraced class collaborationist positions and failed to play the role of revolutionary vanguard of Indian proletariat.
The great Naxalbari movement, which once again brought democratic revolution back to the agenda of the toiling masses, emphasized the leadership role of landless poor peasants over the agrarian movement. As a result, land to the tiller slogan once again reverberated across the country. However, this revolutionary upsurge soon got blocked and suffered severe setbacks as a result of the sectarian tendency that dominated the movement.  As a result, the CPI (ML) movement could not mobilise the landless and poor peasants including the agricultural workers in a mighty agrarian movement based on an agrarian program.
Thus the degeneration of the revisionists and neo-revisionists to social democrats and apologists of neo-colonialism on the one hand, and the persistence of anarchist and left sectarian  positions following Naxalbari on the other, utterly failed to put forward the class line of landless poor peasants and agricultural workers. As a consequence of both reformism and anarchism, the struggle for revolutionary land reforms and ‘land to the tiller’ slogan were pushed aside. Under the influence of reformism, struggles  in the agrarian front were mostly focused to get the cost of inputs cut down and to achieve remunerative prices for agricultural produces. From the early 1980s onward contradictions arising from neo-colonisation became manifested mainly in the form of several struggles led by the new agricultural bourgeois sections and rich peasants especially against the agricultural pricing policies of the state. On the other hand, even before building up a revolutionary peasant movement with a correct class line and mobilising the peasantry for land struggles, illusions of  ‘protracted people’s war’ are being put forward by left sectarians without evaluating the concrete situation in the neocolonial phase.  In brief, both the right opportunist and left sectarian trends in the Communist movement were relegating the class line of the landless poor peasants and agricultural workers to the background by succumbing to either legalism or adventurism.  Together with this, to contain the prairie fire of Naxalbari, since the 1970s, using various hues of NGOism, post-modernism and identity politics, both imperialism and comprador Indian State unleashed a  de-politicization and de-ideologisation drive in the rural sector which contributed to the emergence of a non-class trend regarding the agrarian question.
3.         Organizing the Peasantry and Developing Agrarian Struggles
This critical situation can be overcome only by arousing the landless poor peasants and agricultural workers who constitute more than half of Indian population, firmly upholding the class line of the peasantry, the real tillers of soil, thereby serving their class interests. Various sections of the peasantry including  the adivasis, dalits and other most oppressed sections who are presently influenced and led to reformist illusions by NGOs, subaltern theorists, casteist and communal forces can be won over to the mainstream of revolutionary agrarian movement only  if the Communist Party takes initiative for mobilising them for changing the land relations based on land to the tiller approach. Revolutionary forces should come to the leadership of these struggles by evolving appropriate organizational forms depending on the concrete conditions in different parts of the country. In this context, the Path of Indian Revolution says: “The task before the Party are: Firstly, firmly uphold the class line of the agricultural workers, landless and poor peasants, the revolutionary peasantry, consisting of adivasis, dalits and other most oppressed sections. Secondly, build up agricultural workers and landless, poor peasant organisations with their specific program upholding the path of agrarian revolution as the path forward. Build up these organizations at the state level and co-ordinate them at all India level. In line with the agrarian revolutionary program, form land struggle committees starting from village level with the initiative of both agricultural workers and landless, poor peasant organisation to launch militant struggles with land to the tiller slogan.”
So the primary task before the Party is to mobilize the tens of millions of land less poor peasants and agricultural workers under their respective organizations based on the  principle of land to the tiller. Adivasis, dalits and similar oppressed sections,  who also belong to this class and who are mostly unorganised or organised under casteist, chauvinist, communal and other non-class organisations in many areas  are to be mobilized so as to bring them to the main stream of agrarian struggle for land and livelihood.  Wherever necessary they are to be mobilized  through separate organisations taking in to consideration their specific demands and characteristics. All of them should be organised at state level and coordinated at national level under appropriate organizations with an immediate program of urgent demands and basic program of agrarian revolution.
These organizational initiatives should be followed by launching of the agrarian revolutionary struggle which must be done in two phases. First phase comprises of organising the poor and landless peasant organisation and agricultural worker’s organisation with agrarian revolutionary programme of revolutionising land relations along with immediate slogans. Mobilise them initially based on immediate slogans and struggles to realise them. Then proceed to campaign for the urgent distribution of land declared surplus under ceiling laws, government land lying vacant, forest land lying fallow, land used for bio-fuel cultivation and farm lands whose lease period is over, land illegally occupied by plantations, farm owners, real estate builders, land mafia, etc. to the poor and landless farmers and agricultural workers. Land Struggle Committees can be formed by combining both poor and landless peasant organization and agricultural workers organizations in rural areas. In urban and suburban centres where there are tens of millions of families without minimum housing or shelter, House Right Committees are to be formed mobilizing them. Struggles are to be developed pinpointing the areas to be distributed and then to occupation of those lands, distributing them to the landless and homeless under the leadership of these Committees. Though volunteer squads may be formed under these committees to help the land occupation, vigorous campaigning and mobilisation of the masses in ever-larger numbers should be the main weapons to be utilised in this period.
The main tasks during this first phase is to bring back revolutionary land struggles abandoned by the reformist and sectarian trends to the agenda and prepare the poor and landless peasants and agricultural workers for them. How much time will be taken to advance from campaigning to land occupation in different areas will depend upon the concrete conditions in each area and on the extent of subjective preparations including the strength of the committees. By taking the Telengana-Naxalbari line to the most oppressed adivasis, dalits and other oppressed sections, campaigning for distribution of above mentioned government and forest lands to the landless, and proceeding to the capture of land, a revolutionary atmosphere can be created among the masses to proceed towards the second phase.
The second phase starts with putting forward the agrarian programme to revolutionise the land relations. According to concrete conditions in different areas a ceiling for land required by a family entirely depending an agriculture, land sufficient for such a family to cultivate and subsist on should be declared, for example like 5 acres of irrigated land or 10 acres of un-irrigated land for a family of five. For those families major source of income  is non-agricultural, ceiling of land for housing and place of profession or business should be declared. Land required for community purposes also should be decided. Land records for each Panchayat/Municipality should be prepared by the land struggle committee of the area concerned. Surplus land should be declared and poor and landless peasant and agricultural labourers should be mobilised for campaigning and then taking over the land, starting with that possessed by big landlords, land mafias, corporate houses, MNCs, etc. In urban and suburban areas where housing right committees are functioning, based on a general principle and according to conditions in each area, an urban land ceiling should be declared, surplus lands, buildings, flat, etc. should be found out and the land records should be announced to facilitate campaigns and then struggles to occupy these areas.
The Party state committees under the guidance of the CC should select areas where our party organisation is fairly strong, where poor and landless peasants organisation and agricultural worker’s organisation have started functioning and deploy cadres from outside also to initiate the land struggle. Social and political condition of the area, class divisions, and class contradictions should be studied and the first and second phases of the struggle should be planned and slogans should be formulated after discussion in the party committees and in the peasant and agricultural workers organis-ations. Land struggle committees should be strengthened by including representatives of trade unions and class/mass organisations working in the respective areas. Conditions for land capture should be prepared and land occupation and distribution should by started under the Panchayat level land struggle committees, which are the united fronts at the Panchayat level led by the Party committees.
While launching the campaigns, forming the land struggle committees and starting the phase one and phase two struggles, the following points should be given importance by the party committees. Always ensure the class line of the agricultural workers and landless and poor peasants in the committees. Always persist in investigation and study of concrete conditions in the area and class analysis, whenever questions come up consult with the people. Win over the support of the middle peasants and other progressive sections in the area for the struggle. Ensure the active involvement of trade unions and cadres of mass organisations led by the party in the campaigns and land struggle committees. Ensure the involvement of women in ever-larger numbers and while land is distributed women should be given equal rights. Build up volunteers squads under the land struggle committees and guided by party committees. Destroy the authority of the big landlords and other enemy classes in the village by effectively utilising the elections, wining over the three- tier Panchayat bodies, co-operative societies, etc. in the area under the control of the land struggle committees. Do not confuse contradictions among the people with contradiction with enemy, and always handle contradiction among the people non-antagonistically, in a healthy manner. Vigorously try to expand the area of land struggles continuously. While the struggle for the land is the fundamental one and it should be carried forward vigorously, the land struggle committees at different level should handle and resolve struggle for higher wages, against usury, cancellation of the loans from landlords and merchants, struggle for the reduction of rents, struggle against forced/bonded labour, struggle of the adivasi people against forest contractors, against women’s oppression, against casteist oppression, against communal divide, etc. also wining over more and more sections of the oppressed classes to the agrarian movement. All these tasks are to be taken up with the perspective of mobilizing the revolutionary peasantry for agrarian revolution whose principal objective is wiping out all forms of landlordism including all feudal remnants and pre-capitalist relations in land.
Under imperialist globalization, which is the latest phase of neo-colonisation,  land question has become the central issue more than ever. As a result of the direct entry of speculative finance,  MNCs and corporates in to agrarian sector, millions of acres of agricultural land are diverted for lucrative bio-fuel production, while millions of acres are being snatched away from the peasantry for SEZs ,industrial centres, townships, real estates, infrastructure development, etc. with land concentration becoming a more serious issue than ever. Ever-increasing land concentration in the hands of MNCs, corporates,  landlords, real estate builders and land mafia has displaced millions of peasants and agricultural workers from agricultural land, flouting even existing land ceiling laws. Besides, tens of millions of families in the urban and suburban areas are deprived of even nominal housing when there is an unprecedented concentration in urban property such that majority of the toiling masses in urban centres are compelled to flock together in slums while less than 10% of the rich and super-rich own large chunks of urban property, multi-crore flats and bungalows. Thus, imperialist globalization has worsened the already existing disparity in the ownership of land in the country. As a result, the struggle of the landless, poor peasants and agricultural workers, the real tillers, for land, and the struggle of those displaced people whose lands are snatched away for neo-colonial projects such as SEZs, real estates, townships and industrial centres, for housing have become the central issue nowadays. Therefore, the land struggles with land to the tiller slogan and the struggle for housing rights should be expanded to include the resistance against usurpation of agricultural land for SEZs, townships, and real estates.
Last, but not the least, comes the question of the various plantations and farms owned by MNCs, corporate houses, NRIs and other comprador sections from colonial times onward. Due to well entrenched neo-colonial interests, even the nominal land reforms of post-1947 period completely excluded them from all land ceiling acts.  Under neo-liberalism, as even these ceiling acts are repealed and MNCs and corporate houses are allowed free entry to acquire agricultural land in the name of promoting agri-business, there is a proliferation of plantations and farms of different categories. Thus MNCs corporate houses, numerous trusts and mutts floated by vested interests, and religious and casteist organis-ations and institutions control vast areas under plantations and farms. Now the increasing trend is the large scale use of these lands for non-agricultural money-spinning businesses. Import liberalisation on a massive scale has also created severe crisis in the plantation economy. The burden of this crisis is increasingly shifted to the shoulders plantation workers by denying their hard earned struggles. Hundreds of thousands of workers are rendered jobless and are forced to commit suicide. Hence demand to throw out MNCs and comprador sections from plantations and confiscation of them along with those floated by religious institutions and mutts should also be put forward as an inalienable part of the revolutionary agrarian program. This situation calls for mobilising these workers to go beyond struggles for economic demands and to the capture of plantations and farms where they are locked out or fragmented. Demands to bring such plantations, farms and estates under workers control should be raised appropriately.
4.         Agrarian Program and New Democratic Revolution
One of the basic tasks of the people’s democratic revolution is to mobilize the tens of millions of landless poor peasants and agricultural workers on the basis of a revolutionary agrarian program under the leadership of the proletariat based on worker-peasant alliance for establishing a people’s democratic state. It shall distribute all lands belonging to landlords, feudal remnants and all parasitic sections among the real peasantry based on the principle, land to the tiller. Liberating the agrarian sector from the grip of imperialist finance capital and market system is also part of it. It involves unleashing the productive forces in agriculture and its all round development including self-sufficiency in food and agricultural raw materials through revolutionizing agrarian relations. The primary task of this is to mobilise the landless and  poor peasants  and agricultural workers based  on the agrarian program and intensify the agrarian movement under proletarian leadership as required by the concrete neocolonial conditions today. While upholding the spirit of Telegana and Naxalbari, the present day differences in the class contradictions and concrete situation are to be correctly evaluated and taken care of.
The penetration of corporate and finance capital to agriculture in ever larger forms has intensified agrarian contradictions at an unprecedented level. Given the vastness, unevenness and diversities of a country like India, the concrete application of a general program of agrarian movement proposed at the national level will have its regional and state-level variations. That is, the launching of agrarian struggles in different regions of the country will be according to concrete conditions.  However, irrespective of such variations, country wide revolutionary agrarian struggles involving hundreds of millions of revolutionary peasantry with land to the tiller slogan under the leadership of the working class is the essential content of struggle during the period of new democratic revolution. Such a struggle directed against all forms of landlordism including feudal remnants shall inevitably turn against the state machinery. And, as the struggles develop to higher levels as was the case with Telengana, it will invariably link itself with the capture of political power under the conscious leadership of the Communist Party.
Based on the above discussion, among other things, the agrarian program should include the following essential ingredients at the national level to be made more comprehensive and concrete with necessary changes at the state level :-
1.    Confiscate all lands belonging to the landlords and implement redistribution of land among the peasantry on the basis of land to the tiller.
2.    Confiscate the plantations, farms, etc., held by MNCs and corporate houses and bring them under the collective ownership of the working class.
3.    Declare ceiling for wet and dry agricultural lands according to concrete conditions  of each state and confiscate  all lands above this ceiling and distribute them among the peasantry.
4.    Declare land ceiling for those whose means of livelihood are not agriculture.
5.    Confiscate the lands owned by NRIs, bureaucrats, high income sections, industrialists,  traders, etc., and distribute them among the peasantry.
6.    Confiscate all lands held by religious and casteist organizations and trusts after fixing a ceiling for lands that can be held by such agencies.
7.    Stop conversion of agricultural land for non-agricultural purposes.
8.    Settle adivasi/tribal question through strict implementation laws for the protection of their land including the establishment of adivasi autonomous councils. 
9.    Confiscate all agricultural land that is kept fallow.
10.   Distribute all surplus lands and government lands except those required as forests and public utilities among peasantry.
11.   Abolish all forms of bonded/forced labour and usury.
12.   Evolve a scientific land utilization approach encouraging various states to pursue such a policy according to concrete situations.
13.   Abolish all anti-peasant import, price, and credit policies. Ensure all agricultural inputs such as seeds, fertilizers, pesticides, irrigation, credit, electricity, etc., at subsidized and affordable rates to peasants. Abolish imperialist control over output market and sources of inputs.
The above tasks which form central questions of the revolutionary agrarian program during the period of democratic revolution should be part of a comprehensive national develop-ment program based on an appropriate relationship between agriculture, industry and services. This  can be achieved only through the victory of relentless agrarian struggles by the peasantry under the leadership of the proletariat and the establishment of a people’s democratic state.