(Excerpts from the Programme adopted in the first Conference of the BPKS held in Patna, 10-12 March, 1984)
Basic Programme
1. To struggle for the seizure of land belonging to big landlords, and to distribute it among landless, poor and lower-middle peasants.
2. To struggle for equal wages for equal work, and for wage parity between male and female labourers.
3. To struggle for equal rights for women, and against rape and other immoral practices.
4. To struggle for the establishment of the traditional rights of forest-dweller and fishermen over forest wealth and rivers respectively.
5. To organise mass resistance against the police, landlords and goondas.
6. To struggle for the establishment of the equal social rights of harijans, adivasis, and various religious minorities, particularly the Muslims.
7. To struggle for the abolition of child labour.
8. To struggle for the scrapping of all anti-people acts, including the NSA, ESMA and the Disturbed Areas Act.
9. To struggle for the establishment of a proper balance between the prices of industrial and agricultural commodities.
10. To struggle for the abolition of all indirect taxes and reduction of direct taxes, and for instituting a tax system based on income.
11. To struggle for the abolition of various old, obscurantist legacies such as untouchability, caste discriminations, illiteracy, superstitions, old systems of marriage and sradh (post-funeral ceremony), and dowry.
12. To struggle against feudal culture and for developing a genuine democratic culture based on the positive traditions of the peasantry.
13. To struggle for free education with free hostel and other facilities for poor students of peasant origin, and also for free and proper treatment in village hospitals based on people’s cooperation.
14. To struggle for the cancellation of all uncleared debts of the peasants (advanced by the landlords, usurers, and the government), including the interests accumulated thereon.
15. To struggle for adequate compensation (not only in terms of cash, but mainly in terms of land and employment) for peasants displaced due to mines, factories, dams, colonies and cantonments, etc.
16. To struggle for changing the pro-big bourgeois industrial policy, for the establishment of agro-based small and medium-sized industries and for bringing industrial development in harmony with the development of agriculture.
Immediate Programme
1. To struggle for the enforcement of minimum wages, fixation of working hours and provision of other facilities.
2. To struggle for guaranteeing round-the-year employment for all agricultural labourers.
3. To struggle for the declaration of areas affected by drought or flood as famine-stricken areas with the provision of sufficient and corruption-free relief, and also for waiving the rent in such areas.
4. To struggle for the establishment of the right of the homeless to homestead lands.
5. To struggle for the seizure of vested land as well as land above ceiling and to distribute the land so seized among landless, poor and lower-middle peasants.
6. To struggle for the reduction of the ceiling to 5 acres (in irrigated areas) and to 8 acres (in non-irrigated areas) per family.
7. To struggle for the enforcement of the tenancy act.
8. To struggle for the abolition of the landlords’ control over all public properties (ponds, ahars, schools, maths, etc.) and for bringing them under the control of peasants’ committees.
9. To struggle for the cancellation of all uncleared loans (governmental or non-governmental) of peasants belonging to the lower-income group, including the interests accumulated thereon;
10. To struggle for the provision of crop insurance.
11. To struggle against the landlords’ practice of hoarding and to distribute the grains seized among the peasants.
12. To struggle for the abolition of bonded labour.
13. To struggle against police repression, for withdrawing false cases against peasants, and for scrapping Sections 107 and 109.
14. To organise peasants’ self-defence corps and to train them in wielding traditional weapons so as to defend against attacks of the police and landlord-gangs;
15. To struggle for seizing the guns of tyrannical landlords and to distribute such guns among landless and poor peasants for the purpose of self-defence.
16. To organise strong resistance against casteist oppression.
17. To struggle against medieval oppressoin of the women, harijans, adivasis, various minorities and other weaker sections of the society.
18. To struggle against cultural degeneration, superstition, casteism, untouchability, liquor addiction, gambling, child marriage, dowry, and oppression of widows.
19. To struggle for removing illiteracy.
20. To support the Jharkhand movement.
21. To unite with other democratic organisations and to strengthen the anti-autocratic movement.
22. To oppose imperialist and capitalist exploitation and to unite with all other struggling classes, particularly the working class.
