Over 250 academics, writers and artists have extended support to a protest by workers and peasants called by Left unions in Delhi on April 5 over declining wages, price rise, unemployment and an agrarian crisis.

The Centre of Indian Trade Unions (Citu), All India Kisan Sabha (AIKS) and the All India Agricultural Workers Union (AIAWU) will hold the rally to oppose the government’s “anti-worker” and “anti-farmer” policies.Academics Prabhat Patnaik, Irfan Habib, Ishita Mukhopadhyay, Ramakrishna Chatterjee, Vijaya Venkataraman, Vishwa Mohan Jha, Ambikesh Mahapatra and Malini Bhattacharya; lawyer Ashok Agrawal; poetsKanti Mohan Soz and Subhas Rai; publisher Rajni Arora; Tamil writer R.T. Mathu; and artist Bava Chelladurai are among those who have issued the statement of support for the Mazdoor-Kisan Sangharsh.

“The condition of the working people has deteriorated to an unprecedented level due to the notorious economic onslaught unleashed by the current government,” the statement said, listing a litany of crises stalking the workers and the peasants.

"Declining wages, rising prices of essential commodities, raging unemployment, falling returns for farm produce, abysmal agricultural wages, ever-deepening agrarian distress resulting in precarious migration of millions and floundering welfare schemes systematically curtailed by the government are pushing marginal families into severe poverty,” said the statement.

The distress caused by the economic crisis is leading to suicides by thousands of wage workers, farmers and other sections of the toiling masses. Basic entitlements like education and healthcare are being increasingly privatised, pushing them beyond the reach of common people, it said.

“The government is blindly pushing ahead with its discredited policy of providing gifts to the corporates by cutting corporate taxes, selling off public sector assets at throwaway prices, dismantling protective labour laws, writing off huge corporate loans and inviting predatory foreign capital into the country’s key and strategic industries hitherto reserved for the public sector,” the statement said.

The signatories added that the ruling BJP, its mentor RSS and its affiliates have launched hate campaigns targeting minorities. The government is protecting those spreading hate and is using its agencies to arrest, harass and even bulldoze the properties of those opposing its policies. The statement appealed to all to support the protest.