The Kisan Long March in Maharashtra

This report documents three years – among many decades – of repeated protests and struggles by tens of thousands of farmers and peasants in Maharashtra, led by the All India Kisan Sabha (AIKS). These struggles created the momentum for the historic Long March (March 6-12, 2018) from Nashik to Mumbai. In his essay, Ashok Dhawale, president of the AIKS, provides a brief history of farmers’ protests in Maharashtra from 2015 and explains in detail how the Long March was planned and executed. Dhawale writes that since 1991, when neo-liberal agricultural policies were adopted by the Maharashtra government (and by various governments at the Centre), 300,000 farmers have committed suicide in India. Successive state governments “betrayed assurances [given] to the peasantry” and did not meet their demands. The Long March was organised to protest these “consistent betrayals” by the central and state governments, which have become even more acute in the years of Bharatiya Janata Party rule. The preface by senior journalist P. Sainath (who is the founder editor of the People’s Archive of Rural India) discusses the agrarian crisis, “the corporate hijack of Indian agriculture” and the way forward...