FERMERS' movement in India has been traditionally led by rich, capitalist farmers and kulaks in India. The present turbulence is more obviously intense among the lower strata of peasantry while the upper strata are looking for the possible avenues of compromise and accommodation in the new process. The lowest strata comprising small and marginal peasants are left with no alternative but to rebel or face aggressive corporatisation and suicides. The upper strata of rural society that mobilised the lower strata for their own demands under the banner of farmers’ associations are all set to sacrifice the small and marginal peasants, expecting greater share in the imagined cake of wealth creation in the changed circumstances. The fact that farmers’ suicides have not provoked appropriate response from farmers’ movement against the state, the rulers and the multinationals is enough indication of the class bias of the farmers’ movement. The situation demands an organised political assertion of the worst affected sections of farmers in alliance with agrarian labourers.

The policies of globalisation have further integrated the interests of small and marginal peasants and agrarian labourers and have made the unification of these classes a reality. The distinction between these two classes is being blurred day by day. Many small and marginal peasants have lost their lands since the beginning of the globalisation offensive, particularly in the period between 1993 & 2000. The percentage of landless households to total rural households has increased from 35% in 1987 to 41 % in 2000. The ranks of rural proletariat are increasingly swelling with more and more small peasants joining everyday. Small peasants of yesterday are agrarian labourers today. Unity of these two basic classes of the rural society on the agenda of land reforms and anti-globalisation is increasingly being necessitated by the developments.

Two extreme manifestations of the agrarian crisis — farmers’ suicides and starvation deaths — more forcefully assert the need for thoroughgoing land reforms. The agenda of land reforms was never completed in the entire country even within its narrow official limits. The answer to the present crisis does not lie in legalizing tenancy and effecting a corporatised consolidation of holdings. Rather, the demands for abolition of tenancy, increased public investment in agriculture and allied infrastructure, making institutional credit available to all who till the land, reversal of policies of input and output pricing are the most relevant in today’s conditions. There is a pressing need for more fundamental reforms in agriculture that can reverse the domination of kulaks and multinationals. In what follows we will try to outline a pro-peasant agrarian development strategy.

The demand for taking agriculture out of WTO, or moving out of WTO is being raised vociferously by various quarters. There are also very strong opinions in favour of re-imposing Quantitative Restrictions in toto, or at least, to reserve the right of re-imposing Quantitative Restrictions on selected crops, until developed countries withdraw their high level of internal subsidies to their agriculture and their unduly protective tariff walls on imports.

The recent developments are nothing but an indication that the landlord path of capitalism in India has reached a dead end. The initial experiences of corporatisation also further prove that the multinational and corporate houses are totally incapable of combatting, let alone eliminating the stubborn semi-feudal remnants of Indian society. Rather, they further reinforce and thrive on the extra-economic coercions, a salient characteristic of a semi-feudal society. Reversal of liberalization policies, radical land reform and overhauling the WTO framework remain the cornerstone of any alternative pro-peasant development strategy.