Kisan Sabha's 'jail bharo' on August 9

Intensifying its fight against the Modi government ahead of the Lok Sabha polls, the Left-affiliated Kisan Sabha plans to replicate Maharashtra's long march across the country through a 'Jail Bharo' agitation on the Quit India anniversary.

Dalit and Adivasi organisations are expected to join the protest.

If the August 9 protest demanding action against agrarian crisis gets the CITU’s support, the Kisan Sabha will once again join hands with the CPM-led trade union and All India Agricultural Workers Union (AIAWU) for a joint worker-peasant protest on September 5 in Delhi, in which the organisers expect the participation of five lakh people. The AIKS describe it as the first joint worker-peasant rally in independent India.

All India Kisan Sabha (AIKS) led by president Ashok Dhawale and general secretary Hannan Mollah has already held meetings with a host of Dalit and Adivasi organisations, which have pledged support for the protest programmes.

After the September 5 protest, AIKS leaders are expected to sit with other outfits to formally evolve a joint group involving various mass organisations, which is opposed to the policies adopted by the NDA regime, to chalk out future course of action.

“The protest will be the beginning of a new era of joint struggles in the country that will culminate at the end of corporate-driven economic reforms to resolve the acute agrarian crisis and rural distress,” Mollah told reporters.

Before the 'Jail Bharo' protest, AIKS will collect 10 crore signatures from across the country and submit it to the prime minister through district collectors on August 9. The CITU has declared support for the protest in which cadre of AIKS and supporting outfits would court arrest.

The September 5 protest would see peasants and workers joining the rally in the capital with their families with the slogan, "to change policies, advance mass struggles to change the government".

Dhawale said the Modi government need to go as it is the most anti-farmer and anti-worker government in the country since independence.

AIKS Joint Secretary Vijoo Krishnan said if the government is not willing to change the “reckless anti-peasant policies that aggravate the agrarian crisis, there is no other option but to unleash relentless struggles”.