Socialist leader Dr Ram Manohar Lohia had also echoed in the last century that "the most exploited element in Indian society was the landless village labourers and farmers." Dr Ram Manohar Lohia had said that the freedom struggle in India could not be completed until the prosperity of a humble kisan (farmer) became a reality. When Dr Lohia was elected President of Hind Kisan Panchayat in 1949, he said in his address that the reconstruction of India was primarily a question of the reconstruction of her five and half lakhs (550,000) of villages. Like Mahatma Gandhi, he wanted a village-based democracy in India. Each village should be a zone of peace where proprietary rights of land should be given to the impoverished and actual tillers of the soil and even landless labourers would be able to secure rehabilitation and social justice. Dr Lohia had put the spotlight on the bitter truth of so-called 'urban development' when he said that our villages were neglected by the government for the benefit of urban areas. Village dwellers were exploited economically and culturally. Land must belong to the tiller, was Dr Lohia's priority, in his scheme of agrarian revolution.
reality is grim: most land does not belong to those who till it
So many decades after our independence, words of Gandhi and Lohia have only gained relevance manifold - because most land still does not belong to the tiller. The kind of 'development' model we are chasing, is not resulting in "tillers should own the land" but even those who have a land are at risk of losing it. After the policies of globalization, privatisation and liberalisation that were implemented in India since early 1990s, even land-holder farmers are becoming landless, said Harinder Singh Manshahia, farmer and farmers' leader, and Punjab State President of Socialist Party (India).
According to
National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO)
data, 60% of the country's population has right over only 5% of land; whereas
10% of the population has control over 55% of the land. The
2011 Socio Economic and Caste Census shows that 56% of households in rural
India do not own any agricultural land. The NSSO 2013 revealed that top 7.18%
of households own more than 46.71% of the land.
Raja Mujeeb said: "On the Day of the Landless, we - farmers and peasants, poor farmhands, agricultural workers, contract farmers, Dalits, rural women and youth, and land reform advocates across Asia - vow to further our resolve in fighting against landlessness. Landlessness breeds social injustice, hunger, and impoverishment. Landlessness is a bane to farmers and all the people of the world."
Dr Sandeep Pandey, Ramon Magsaysay Awardee and national Vice President of Socialist Party (India) said that "It is unacceptable that farmers and food producers who feed our nations do not have access to land and are food insecure because of land and resource grabs, and of corporate capture of agricultural production and trade."
why hunger? when farmers grow more than needed to feed all
The COVID-19
pandemic that ravaged the world in 2020 further exposed the profit-oriented
nature of global food systems as it drove millions of people into chronic
hunger. By the end of 2019, at least 690 million people went hungry. By
the start of 2020, hundreds of millions of people continue to suffer acute food
insecurity as they face conflict, climate change, and economic crises of epic
proportions.
As of October 2020, a staggering seven million people have died of hunger.
Pandemic-related hunger also led to the deaths of 10,000 more children each
month over the first year of the health crisis. Forecasts even warned about
multiple famines in the coming months as the lowest-income households are most
likely to face increased hunger. Strict lockdown policies and quarantines have
affected all stages of food supply, resulting in a steep rise in food prices
and widespread food insecurity.
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
