Mainstream Weeklyby Nayakara Veeresha
Introduction and Context
India witnessed massive farmers’ protests and rallies all over the country since the last two years. On November 29-30, 2018 tens of thousands of farmers had gathered in the Capital city of Delhi and demanded from the government a special session of Parliament to discuss the agrarian issues. This is a timely and just demand in the wake of an unprecedented and acute farming crisis. It reflects not only the failure of the government, but also raises important questions about the government’s commitment to the farmers’ well-being.
The agrarian crisis has deepened since the post-economic reform period following the neo-liberal model of development. Since then the focus has shifted from agriculture to the services and manufacturing sectors. The effective implementation of a plethora of schemes/policies of the current and previous governments is not reflected on the ground. The various policies of agriculture have focused upon issues of crop insurance, minimum support price, low income and farm loans. However, they failed to address the structural issues, namely, poor land governance, especially land records, commercialisation of agriculture, problems of irrigation, inadequacies of the credit system including farm loans, dismantling the role of the middlemen in the APMCs.
The recent incidents of farmers’ protests, which sometimes turned into violent manifestations, signify the acute agrarian crisis that has seen unique farmers’ suicides in the countryside. This reflects the continued neglect of agriculture by the successive governments of all the mainstream political parties in the post-independence period, specifically in the post-economic reform period since 1991.
Research Questions and Methodology
Set in the above context of historical and contemporary neglect of agriculture by the mainstream political parties, an attempt has been made to understand and explore the agrarian programme of the Communist Party of India (Maoist), from now on the CPI (Maoist) party. The main objective is to appraise the political rhetoric of the CPI (Maoist), that is, armed agrarian revolution. The rationale for choosing the CPI (Maoist) for the purpose of analysis is that it is the only party in India which claims to bring revolution in the country on the basis of agrarian insurrection. In the light of contemporary processes in agriculture, in particular the alarming rise in the number of farmer suicides, a serious question to be asked is: why the CPI (Maoist) is unable to contain the agrarian distress and farmer suicides in the country? How to understand the CPI (Maoist) party’s agrarian programme and the agenda of ‘New Democratic Revolution’ through people’s protracted war? What is the role of peasants in the agrarian programme? The analysis has been carried out by using a process tracing the methodology supplemented by the techniques of content and discourse analysis.
Theoretical Propositions
The path of revolution, as stated in the party’s programme of the CPI (Maoist), make specific remarks with respect to the agrarian situation in the country. It is as follows:
“The Indian state and society is semi-colonial and semi-feudal under the neo-colonial type of indirect rule, exploitation and control. The Indian Revolution, under the leadership of the proletariat will establish new democracy through the path of armed struggle by overthrowing imperialism and their running dogs—the big landlords and the comprador bureaucrat bourgeois classes. The axis of this revolution will be armed agrarian revolution.