NEW DELHI: After grabbing the nation’s attention through visuals of their sore-filled, bleeding feet, nearly 20,000 agricultural workers from Nashik, Maharashtra will participate in a joint mass protest of peasants and workers against the Modi government in New Delhi on September 5.

The Left-backed mass protest, pitched as a first-of-its-kind coming together of members of the All India Agricultural Workers Union (AIAWU), All India Kisan Sabha and Centre of Indian Trade Unions will see about five lakh peasants and workers march through the national capital to draw attention to the simmering issues of rising prices, deepening rural distress, rising unemployment, and the government’s failure to offer remunerative prices for agricultural produce.

AIKS president Ashok Dhawale said, “Agriculture workers from Nashik have booked an entire train to travel to the national capital to participate in the protest. Other mass organisations have also lent their support and nearly 20,000 people from Maharashtra alone, will participate.”

While the mass protest is not political in nature, CITU secretary Tapan Sen said the impact of nearly 5 lakh workers and peasants marching from Ram Lila Maidan and eight other venues in and around Delhi to the Parliament street, will have the intended political impact. “Each mass organisation has worked over several months to sensitise people and inform them about the anti-people, and anti-national policies of the Modi government. The mass organisations are playing the role of identifying the real enemies of the masses and to inform them of it. This protest is aimed at drawing the attention of the government to the joint demands of the working class.”

AIAWU president S Thirunavukkarusu said the agricultural wage arrears have been building up for over six months, and that the Modi government has neither been able to deliver assistance to farm workers for drought or flood. “There is no alternative employment and people are agricultural workers are migrating in large numbers. Even after 12 years of the employment guarantee Act, government is only able to provide 46 days of employment, on an average,” he said.

The workers’ protest, in addition to its focus on mass issues, will also attack the government for forcefully shrinking the space for dissent by attacking various articles of the Indian Constitution. Former MP and AIKS general secretary Hannan Mollah said, “By imposing the barbaric Hindu Rashtra, the government is destroying the right to say No, which is an inseparable part of any democracy.”

