STRIKE WORK ON 20^TH AUGUST AGAINST THE ANTI-WORKER POLICES OF THE UPA GOVT.

The UPA Government, close on the heels of the decision to move forward on the dangerous Indo-US nuclear accord, has announced that the pension funds of the workers and employees would now be opened to private players vindicating the apprehensions of the working class that its moves would be diverted for investments in the market. The British held banking corporation, HSBC, Reliance has been short listed by the government to manage the pension funds of the workers & employees. This step by the Central Government is another of those anti-worker measures that has adverse repercussions on social security of the working class. After the recent drama in the parliament culminating in the UPA winning the ‘trust vote’, the Finance Minister Mr. Chidambaram reiterated assertively that the government would go full steam on economic reforms, that are playing havoc with the lives of the toiling masses of this country.

The UPA government is wallowing in the glory of ‘economic growth’, a distorted one at that, while inflation has reached the double digit. There is this so-called 8,9 percent growth amidst severe agrarian crisis, there is this so-called growth in the midst of unprecedented price-rise, there is this so-called growth in the midst of the rising tide of unemployment under the regime of the imperialist sponsored economic reforms. The limited public distribution system (PDS) the country had, is dismantled and speculators rule the roost making the lives of the common people unbearable. It is in the service of these speculators and the big business, which has entered retail trade that the government has allowed the obnoxious future and forward trading in essentials.

The drive of Indian ruling classes to forcibly take away the land of peasants and hand it over to foreign & Indian big companies and building Mafia took another violent turn on August 14, 2008 in the vicinity of the capital Delhi, where the trigger-happy police of UP led by Ms. Mayawati, the new icon for the revisionist left, killed five peasant activists in the brutal firing. Whatever the party of ruling classes in power, the land-grabbing of the peasants under the colonial Land Acquisition 1894, is taking ominous turn through length and breadth of the country. The recent mayhem in Greater Noida has added one more  bloody chapter to the drive of the ruling classes towards ‘development’ on the corpses of peasantry and poor people and added one more chapter to the glorious resistance by the peasantry to this bloody drive. Ghodi Bachheda and other villages of Greater Noida have been added to the likes of Kalinganagar, Nandigram, Singur, Raigarh, Erasama, Bajheda Khurd and a number of others where peasants have challenged the bloody might of the rulers. With the bodies of martyred peasants laid in this battle, the vultures of ruling classes have come out yet again to lead their anger away from their patrons. These servitors of corporates, both foreign and domestic, are coming out to prey upon the dead and dull the living. But the saga of peasant struggles against forcible land acquisition continues to unfold with determination and continuity as a part of the Indian people’s struggle against imperialism and domestic reactionaries.

We are here reproducing a report released by Jan Hastakshep, Campaign Against Fascist Designs, prepared by its team after a visit to the villages and interacting with villagers. 

New Delhi 16^th August 2008.  On 14^th August 2008 a two member Janhastakshep fact finding team of Dr. Ish Mishra, and Sachin Singh visited Ghodi-Bacheda village in Greater NOIDA, to meet with the farmers who had been fired upon by the U.P. police a day earlier on 13^th Aug 2008. The farmers were shot and beaten by the U.P. Police while demanding a higher rate of compensation for their agricultural lands which was being acquired by the U.P. government for “infrastructure projects”, including industries and an international airport, which has now been shelved.