After an year-long struggle the Modi government was finally forced to back down and repeal the 3 black farm laws. Farmers from Punjab and Haryana have always been saying that we have seen the ill-effects of ending the Mandi system in Bihar. Nitish Kumar has ruined Bihar by ending the Mandi system. Farmers in Bihar are deprived of Minimum Support Price. They are forced to sell their crops at Rs 1000-1200 per quintal to middlemen. Therefore the Nitish government must learn a lesson from the historic victory of the farmers' movement and reinstate MSP in Bihar, and guarantee procurement at MSP for paddy, wheat, maize, pulses and other crops.
The above remarks were made at a press conference in Patna on 3 December by CPIML General Secretary Dipankar Bhattacharya. Present at the press conference were State Secretary Kunal, AIARLA General Secretary Dhirendra Jha, legislative party leader Mahboob Alam, Satyadev Ram and others.
The Niti Ayog report has once again exposed the truth of the 'Development with Justice' slogan on which the Nitish government has been riding for the past 15 years. Instead of accepting the reality, the government is saying that the Niti Ayog should change its evaluation criteria. It is the BJP which has constituted the Ayog according to whose criteria Bihar stands last in the country. The people of Bihar are unable to understand what kind of development this is. Bihar stands nowhere on the 3 important indices of health, education and quality of life. Even today 51.9% of the population is below poverty line.
Bihar has gone into an abyss on all criteria including unemployment, education, health, law and order, electricity, cooking gas, participation of students in schools, and women's safety. Not only the Niti Ayog report but also all other prestigious national and international standards institutions have brought out similar numbers for Bihar.
Even after one year has passed, CPIML MLAs have not been given residences; neither has the party been given space for its office. We can then easily imagine the situation of the common people of Bihar. The government has recently released figures saying that 90,000 poor have been provided housing land and only 26,000 poor now remain without housing land. The truth is that only 53 acres of land have been distributed among the poor: there should be a limit even to lies, but this government has proved an able disciple of the Modi government and crossed all limits when it comes to telling lies!
Only recently the Bihar government has announced that people settled on government land will not be tolerated. We have grave doubts that, just as the poor who had been settled for years were evicted from their lands in the name of the Jal Jeevan Hariyali Yojana, this time also it is the poor who are going to be targeted. This government can never take action against the land mafia, but never hesitates to oppress and torture the poor.
The BJP-JDU government is celebrating 15 years in power, but these 15 years will be remembered in history as a period of betrayal of the poor, dalits, workers, farmers, students, youth, scheme workers and the teaching community, for turning Bihar into Police Raj, for imposing dictatorship and for re-emboldening feudal criminals. The killing of dalits, poor, and activists at various places including Supoul, Araria, Sitamarhi, and sanitation worker Ramsewak Ram at Samastipur, is highly condemnable. The poor have to bear attacks from both sides, be it the police or dominant sections.
