IN the main areas of struggle, village committees of the Kisan Sabha have come to assume the role of a veritable ‘parallel government’, exercising all-round control on behalf of the broad masses of the peasantry. They perform the twin tasks of uniting the peasant masses and mobilising them against the enemy's onslaughts. In particular, the village committees

      (i) exercise control over all public properties and public affairs;

      (ii) fix wages for agricultural labourers and shares for sharecroppers (in some cases, even sharecroppers are also fixed by the committee);

      (iii) impose fines and levies;

      (iv) curb theft, and punish the culprits and their patrons;

      (v) take up reform and developmental programmes;

      (vi) resolve disputes among the peasantry (there has been a considerable decrease in the number of diwani and faujdari (criminal) cases in local and district courts in the main areas of peasant struggle);

      (vii) exercise supervision over block officials, mukhiyas and sarpanches;

      (viii) mobilise the masses in struggles against landlords and the police; and

      (ix) implement all calls and programmes put forward by the Kisan Sabha.

To gain a better understanding of the development and functioning of the village committees, let us take the example of one village committee in Gaya.

The village comprises 40 households, mainly middle peasants and a few landless and poor peasants. Both Hindus and Muslims reside in this village. The Yadavas, Koiris and harijans form the bulk of the Hindu population, the Yadavas being in the majority. To start with, one Kisan Sabha cadre organised three rounds of village-level meetings at intervals of 8 to 10 days. He explained the role of the village committee to the village people, following which a seven-men committee was elected through a village-level meeting. Of these 7 members, 2 were landless peasants, 1 poor peasant, 2 lower-middle peasants, while the other 2 came from middle peasant families. Caste/communitywise. 4 of them were Yadavas, 1 Muslim and the rest harijans. The committee-members then elected their three office ­bearers — president, secretary and treasurer. The secretary is an educated youth. It was decided that

    (a) the committee-members would meet once in a week;

    (b) a village-level meeting would be organised every fortnight;

    (c) a Gram Raksha Dal (village self-defence corps) would be set up, comprising mainly the village youth, which would organise regular night-watch; and

    (d) a regular, two-pronged fund-system would be developed, which would require

        (i) every household to daily set aside a handful of rice — the fund so accumulated would be used mainly for self-defence purposes and partly for advancing interest-free loans to the villagers in times of acute crisis — and,

        (ii) middle peasants to give 1 per cent of their seasonal production and landless/poor peasants a fixed amount of five kgs of foodgrains per season as levy to the organisation, part of which would be deposited with the higher committee.