Conference of Jharkhand Gramin Mazdoor Sabha
The fifth Conference of Jharkhand Gramin Mazdoor Sabha was held at Ghutua (Nayanagar, Barkakana) in Ramgarh district on 6 November. The Conference began after paying tribute to the martyrs of Ghutua police firing (30 October, 1988) - Comrades Ramprasad Mahato, Rijhni Devi and Balkaiya Devi - at the martyrs' memorial followed by a march by delegates and guests to the conference venue. The conference highlighted important issues of rural workers like proper implementation of MGNREGA, Forest Rights Act and Fifth Schedule provisions, food security and housing rights, provision of electricity and drinking water, immediate halt to displacement and dispossession in the name of land consolidation and formation of a land bank, education and health for all, and people's rights over land, water, forests and mineral resources of Jharkhand. These are the key concerns of the rural labour movement in Jharkhand and JGMS has been raising them relentlessly.
Comrade Dipankar Bhattacharya, CPIML General Secretary, was the chief guest in the conference. He also paid tributes to the martyrs of Freedom Movement and garlanded the statue of Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose before going towards the Ghutua Martyrs’ Memorial. He was accompanied by more than 500 delegates and volunteers in the march.
The Conference began after the flag hoisting by veteran comrade Soharai Kisku and paying two minutes silence to honour the recently departed AIARLA leader Laxmi Paswan and Jan Sanskriti Manch’s ex-president and Hindi critique and Marxist thinker Manager Pandey.
Addressing the delegates and guests in the open session of the conference comrade Dipankar congratulated the delegates for the conference which was held after a long Covid19 forced gap and hoped that the Grameen Mazdoor Sabha will meet the challenges faced by the rural poor at the current juncture. He called for bigger and widespread struggles in the countryside against the increasing hunger and malnutrition. India lags behind its neighbours Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nepal in the Global Hunger Index, and people are burdened with rising inflation and unemployment on the one hand and laws like MGNREGA meant to provide employment as a right and dignity to the poor are being weakened by the present regime. He said that the Right to Employment of rural poor is under attack. The rural workers have Job Cards for employment seekers in villages which were not earlier linked with the Aadhaar, or any other APL or BPL cards. People were entitled for 100 days’ job guarantee within an area of 5 kilometres of one’s own village. Moreover, there is a provision of Unemployment Allowance in case the job was not given by the district administration. The possession of a Job Card used to give a sense of entitlement to the village workers, but now this law as well as many such laws which were giving some relief for the rural populace are being curtailed and weakened by the Modi government. Now rural workers are not getting proper jobs under this scheme as per the rules, the wages are kept at very low and those are not being paid timely violating the Act which ensures full payment in a prescribed time frame, moreover, the job cards are at many places being kept by the dominant gram mukhiyas which they use for manipulating funds allotted to the workers. Another important legislation the National Food Security Act (NFSA) has also been met with a similar fate.
He further said that we have seen that wherever some scheme was linked with the Aadhaar, it resulted in defeating the actual objective of the scheme. The beneficiaries number declined after Aadhaar linkage in the BPL lists too. Unfortunately now the government wants to link people’s voter cards with Aadhaar which everyone must oppose. The CPIML has submitted its objections with the Election Commission of India in this regard. Although the ECI has replied to our objection saying there is no compulsion for Voter ID - Aadhaar linkage, the moot question remains that why are people being forced to link Voter ID with Aadhaar at ground level? Already we have seen that lakhs of people have been deprived from rations under BPL and other schemes only because of Aadhaar!
When Modi called for hoisting tricolour at homes on the occasion of 75th Independence Day, we asked the government to provide Flags to every poor family, instead the regime forced poor PDS card holders to buy flags for Rs. 25 else they will not get rations which was their legal right. This happened in Haryana and many other states. This is a shame that the government can deprive the poor of their food meant to protect them from hunger and malnutrition in the name of Independence Day celebrations.
Only wheat and rice is provided to the families through PDS which is not enough to save them from hunger. Malnutrition is the main aspect of hunger in India and government ration shops should also give a whole balanced diet, which includes edible oils, milk, pulses and other nutrition. In India children below 5 years are most vulnerable to the menace of malnutrition, therefore, we need a more robust and effective legislation to fight hunger. We need a better and reformed public distribution system, but the Modi government is doing the opposite.
Modi calls peoples’ legal and constitutional entitlements freebies which is an insult to the citizenry. His government is trying to dismantle PDS which we all must resist. In fact, Modi is giving freebies to his crony capitalists, the likes of Adani and Ambani. In the name of privatisation public assets are being handed over to private companies almost for free. Many infrastructural assets, public corporations, national highways to airports and shipping ports all are being privatised. The Modi government even tried to hand over our agriculture to corporates through three farm laws against which our brave farmers fought hard and forced the Modi government to withdraw them. Still this government is busy selling out farmers interests and the country's agriculture to crony corporates. The capitalists are enjoying real freebies while poor people’s rights are under attack, and we must change this scenario.
Comrade Dipankar reminded of the Corona pandemic and said that we all have lost someone during pandemic because of non-availability of proper medical care, hospitals, ambulances, doctors and paramedical staff, and even the lack of oxygen. We then dedicated our Sundays to remember our beloved under the campaign ‘In Memory of Loved Ones’. Had there been a sincere government, lakhs of lives could have been saved. The Modi government is still promoting private hospitals and not interested in opening more government hospitals. The Aayushman Scheme has become a tool of extraction of public funds by the private hospitals which are exploiting this scheme by prescribing unnecessary tests which are really not required. They intend to make more and more profits without caring for the people’s health. The government hospitals if provided with adequate facilities can better utilise Rs. 5 lakhs being given as insurance cover under Aayushman scheme. The lack of health facilities is a systemic problem which can only be overcome by opening more government hospitals at primary and subsequent levels. We cannot limit our struggles to only land, wage and employment, children’s education and peoples’ health are also our essential requirements.
This government wants to divide the country on communal lines and divert people’s attention from essential requirements like health, education and employment. We must foil these divisive designs and unite people by carrying forward the legacy of the Freedom movement fought unitedly under the leaderships of Gandhi, Nehru, Bhagat Singh and Communists. Those in the government today are the same people who never took part in the freedom struggle and, instead, brokered for the British colonialists.
In Jharkhand BJP is trying to grab power by misusing the constitutional institutions like Governor and Election Commission and agencies like CBI, we should not let BJP succeed in its fascist intentions. Any attempt to undermine the elected state government will be opposed by the CPIML.
Comrade Dipankar called for resistance struggles against curtailing MNREGA, violation of Forest Rights Act, displacement of adivasis to favour mining corporations. He condemned central government’s backdoor interventions in Jharkhand in an attempt to weaken the state government and hoped that people of the state, the youth, coal miners, adivasis, women and farmers will give a befitting reply to the BJP and Modi government. He concluded his speech with a call for bigger unity among Jharkhandi people to protect the dignity, natural resources and rights of the people of the state.
