It was at Hazaribagh, on April 15, 2014, as BJP's prime ministerial candidate, that Narendra Modi had promised a profitable minimum support price to farmers.
At the Conference hall, AIKM's senior-most Vice President Devendra Chauhan hoisted the organisation's flag and tribute was paid to martyrs of peasant movements including those killed at Badkagaon and Mandsaur.
AIKM General Secretary Comrade Rajaram Singh spoke of the intense agrarian crisis and farmers' distress due to the government's policy of handing over seeds, fertilisers and other vital aspects of agriculture to corporate interests.
As a result, farmers were being caught in a vicious debt trap even when they produced bumper harvests, while recurrent droughts and other calamities intensified the crisis.
Among delegates who discussed the draft report and suggested ways forward for the peasants' movement were Gurnam Singh Bhikhi and Balkaran Balli of Punjab, Afroz Alam and Shashikant Singh of UP, Ramchandra Kulhari of Rajasthan, Kripa Narayan Singh, Jitendra Yadav, and Chandrama Prasad of Bihar, Shyamdev Yadav of Jharkhand, OP Arya of Haryana, Nilanjan Bhattacharya of Odisha, D Pullarao of Andhra Pradesh, Simpson of Tamil Nadu, Krishnapada Pramanik and Gopal Roy of West Bengal and Rajendra Shah of Uttarakhand.
On the dais were CPI(ML) CCMs Kartik Pal, Balasundaram, Janardan Prasad, Manoj Bhakt, and KD Yadav; and social activist Shiv Kumar Shibu.