The Navnirman Krushak Sangathan, which is spearheading rallies in protest against farmers’ suicide, on Monday announced to hold a mega convention with involvement of 50,000 farmers here for seven days from February 17, 2016 with a “Do or Die” call.
During the proposed convention, the issue of farmers’ right on land, water and forest would be raised and demands a ‘PPP’(price, prestige and pension) would be stressed for.
A statement claimed that the Sangathan has given `10,000 to each family of 24 farmers who had committed suicide for crop loss and loan burden in the State in October and November 2015.
It had also led a three-day fast stir involving 300 farmers here from December 16 to 18. Many intellectuals, social activists and opposition political parties had given their moral support to the stir.
Earlier in November, it had organised a parallel convention to the ruling BJD’s Sohela Samavesh. A total of 800 farmers belonging to the Sangathan had been arrested then.
The Navnirman Krushak Sangathan, a farmer wing of the “Navnirman Samiti” has been continuing farmer movements for the last five years demanding price, prestige and pension for farmers besides protection of indigenous people’s rights on land, water, forest and mining.
“Till date, all the experiments of ‘village republic’ have failed to control the State power as the latter has artificial finance capital and war economy. Now, time has come to control the policy of the State in order to make it favourable to the ‘village republic’ to formulate and implement policies of the villages. This looks inevitable as some groups are trying to achieve the power through ballot politics and some others through bullet politics (Maoists). The ballot politics has evolved the centralised capitalist structure and the bullet politics has given the centralised autocratic structure. Both the structures have broken the back bone of the village republic,” NNKS State Convenor Akshaya Kumar observed and said the Sanghathan would keep up its efforts to strengthen village economy.
Kumar said thought there are many local problems like irrigation, water-logging and lack of cold storage, yet the Sangathan has kept up its fight for two major issues to change the fate of the farmers.
“Every farmer should get Rs 5,000 per month to fulfill his basic needs of food, clothing, shelter, health and education. The other demand is minimum support price (MSP) of `5,000 for quintal of paddy,” he said.