PRAGOTI

It is clear that it is the ruling classes, their political parties and their elitist policies that are at the root of the situation in which Maharashtra and its people find themselves after 51 years. The popular worker-peasant slogan in the Samyukta Maharashtra movement of building a ‘Socialist Maharashtra in a Socialist India’ has been negated by these same forces. With the imperialist-oriented neoliberal policies of the last two decades, the mass of working people are being sidelined, economic and social disparity has widened and corruption has reached unprecedented levels. Ashok Dhawale, Maharashtra state secretary, Communist Party of India (Marxist) writes on the 50th anniversary of the formation of the state.

It was the largest peasant agitation led by the AIKS in Maharashtra in recent years. For two weeks beginning Republic Day on January 26, 2011 up to February 8, the Maharashtra Rajya Kisan Sabha, affiliated to the AIKS, led a massive statewide Jail Bharo and Rasta Roko stir on burning agrarian issues, in which around one lakh peasants participated in strength. The call for this stir was given in the 7,000-strong statewide AIKS rally on the Nagpur state assembly on December 15, 2010.