For someone from a family of doctors, grass-roots activism for peasants was once a world away for Ashok Dhawale, president of the All India Kisan Sabha (AIKS) which spearheaded the Kisan Long March in Maharashtra this year. But it was his work as a doctor that led him to that path in the early 1970s.
“At the hospital in Mumbai where I worked, a lot of children from poor families used to be admitted with tuberculosis. Some of them used to return in a few months with a relapse, though we had cured it. I went to their houses and found them living in abject conditions. I realised that just medical treatment was not enough. If you don’t attack the root cause, these diseases cannot be controlled,” Mr. Dhawale told The Hindu .
He was in the city as part of an event related to the 200th birth anniversary celebrations of Karl Marx organised by Chintha Publishers.
By 1978, he joined the Communist Party of India (Marxist), spending the next two decades with its student and youth organisations. The farmers’ organisation remained in his focus then too, with him playing a role in starting units of the AIKS in some districts of Maharashtra.
In 1983, he gave up his medical practice.
The long march was the result of many years of work by the AIKS.
“The AIKS in Maharashtra has had a tradition of such struggles for many years, without which this march could not have been organised.
“For a long time, people like Godavari Parulekar have worked in peasant belts, especially the tribal belts in Nashik and Thane. The farmers came together as a class for the march, transcending divisions of religion and caste. The issues that we raised included loan waiver, remunerative price, land rights. and crop insurance,” he says.
Women’s role
The massive participation of women was a highlight of the long march, he says. Even after the march, the AIKS did not rest on the laurels and organised two big follow-up rallies on April 2 and May 3 in Maharashtra to press for implementation of their demands.
“The implementation has not been up to the mark, though a Cabinet decision was taken to waive all the loans from 2001 to 2017. The next plan is to have a 10-crore signature campaign across the country, raising the same issues. The Modi government has failed the farmers in every respect. The Centre is mum on loan waiver, though they have resources. The farmers are not even getting the cost of production, leave alone 1.5 times the production cost, for this rabi season.
Local struggles
In September, a Mazdoor-Kisan rally will be held in Delhi. Local struggles will of course continue. That is the mainstay of the organisation,” he says.
