Shri Provash Ghosh, General Secretary, SUCI(C), has issued the following statement today:–
We severely condemn killing of five peasants and grievous injury to many others when the police of the BJP-led Madhya Pradesh (MP) government opened fire on the agitating farmers on 5 June last at Mandsaur district of Madhya Pradesh which the BJP leaders often project as a model of agricultural progress. The farmers were legitimately demanding that the government grant them a loan waiver and set a minimum support price (MSP) for their farm produce. Not only MP; the suffering peasants of neighbouring Maharashtra, far-off Tamil Nadu or the states of UP, Gujarat, Haryana, Rajasthan and Punjab are seething in discontent and organizing movements in various forms demanding debt relief and remunerative price for their produce. Maharashtra peasants observed a 2-day bandh, the drought-hit and the Tamil Nadu peasants staged a 40-day protest dharna in Delhi. To hoodwink the peasants, the various state governments are announcing MSPs for selective crops with stringent conditions so that benefits remain ever-eluding to the poor peasants. The recently announced farm loan waiver by the UP government is equally deceptive as the misery-stricken impoverished peasants would hardly be able to comply with the stipulated conditions. And now when the peasants are forced to agitate for their legitimate demands, the government responds with bullets and despotic leaders like the union home minster asks the MP government to have a crackdown on those “spreading unrest”. While the government could liberally grant tax waiver and concession to the tune of Rs 9 lakh crores to the big industrial houses and money bags in last fiscal year, its spokespersons are now shamelessly opposing farm loan waivers on the plea of denting the economy. This is the spectacle of achhe din that the BJP had promised to the countrymen.
While giving call for observing a countrywide protest day on 8 June against the horrifying MP firing incident, demanding adequate compensation for the victims and stringent punishment of the police officers and political elements guilty of this ghastly crime, we call upon the struggling peasants not to be misled by the cajoling words or apparent belligerence of the reactionary and compromising forces and instead organize united powerful prolonged conscious movement under correct revolutionary leadership to take their just struggle to its logical culmination.
