The executive meeting of the Trade Unions International of workers in Agriculture, food, commerce, textiles and allied industries' called upon to intense struggle against the anti-people policy of the domestic rulers and the peasantry and agricultural workers should unite with all forces fighting against neo-colonial plunder. Moreover, it has been urged to try and build and strengthen international solidarity among the working people belonging to different countries to fight against the attacks of the multinationals. Apart from Fredric Hague president of the organization representatives from 12 foreign countries including Russia, Colombia, Senegal, France, Iran, Bangladesh, Srilanka and Nepal had attended the meeting held here at the Kerala house.
Later in the afternoon a two day Asian regional seminar was on " Neo-liberal globalisation, its impact on the agricultural situation in Asia and the tasks of the peasants and agricultural workers organisations'' also began. In the seminar a " basic' paper was presented by S. R.Pillai vive president of the Trade Unions International of workers in agricultural, food, commerce, textile and allied industries.
It was said that the wide disparity between Asians countries in terms of size, soil and climatic factors, terrain, degree of industrial development, culture and so on makes it extremely difficult to generalsie, on most issues, for the region as whole. This note attempts, despite their diverse conditions to reach some broad conclusions that would apply to most countries in the region. This is more so because the global trinity is attempting to impose a standardised set of agricultural policies that they were claiming would apply to all kinds of situations, they said.
They felt that one such conclusion is regarding the essentially symbiotic nature of relationship between agriculture and industry that is in the sharp contrast with the view of the global trinity that these two are in conflict with one another in the poor countries. They felt that that most vital agricultural questions can not be solved without a certain amount of industrial development and the consequent transfer of surplus rural population to urban-industrial jobs.
They rejected the view that the production plan of a country should be solely guided by comparative advantage, which would imply in the case of the vast majority of the poor countries, remaining confined within the four walls of agriculture and light industry, and doing the option of industiralisation without which land question too can not be resolved.
The organisations of the peasants and agricultural labourers in the Asian countries are facing two types of tasks. One of these is to develop united popular movement against the ruling classes in these countries demanding for ending land monopoly, for an egalitarian distribution of land, for the protection of the rights of the tenants, agricultural labourers and forest communities, for making more public investments in irrigation , power, science and technology ,for providing credit facilities, for taking market prooection measures, etc. The other major task is to combat the conspiracy of the imperialist countries to keep the poor countries poor, to control and exploit their biological resources and agriculture through multinational corporations, and to make them dependent on the rich countries, for technologies and inputs forever.
The neo-colonial attack is all embracing and international in character. The peasantry and agricultural workers should unite with all forces fighting against neo-colonial plunder. They should also try to build and strengthen international solidarity among the working people belonging to different countries to fight against the attacks of the imperialist countries.
The implications of the international patent regime established by the Marakesh agreement of 1994 that has led to widespread bio-piracy of the vast biological resources of the region. the bio-piracy has been facilitated by the absence of a comprehensive inventory of the flora and fauna of the country, and by a lack of coordination among the developing countries of the region to combat multinational corporations machinations. One of the demands of the governments to join hands, both to strengthen cooperation among themselves and to fight against multinational conspiracies and to form viable economic alliances that can protect the economic sovereignty of the individual countries against the onslaught of the global trinity.
Among those who are attending the seminar apart from the representatives of foreign organisations were leaders of kisan movements in India namely, Harkisan Singh ,Surjeet, Benoy Konar, etc PK.Kodiyan, vice president of the international bodies and leader of BKMU presided over the seminar.