A Kissan Panchayat was convened in Kamalia on April 8, 2026, by former leader PSC Ali Behram Ghadi to mobilize support for a grand rally scheduled for April 17 against corporate farming.
The Panchayat was held against the backdrop of the Green Pakistan Initiative, which has drawn intense criticism from various sections of society, most notably low-level peasants. The event was organized by former members of the Progressive Students Collective (PSC), Ali Behram Ghadi and Haris Ahmad Khan, while current PSC President Ali Abdullah Khan and Secretary-General Eqbal Khan also joined the proceedings.
The main objective of the Panchayat was to mobilize support for a tractor rally on International Peasants’ Day, April 17, and to launch a substantive campaign against corporate farming. The Green Pakistan Initiative, launched in 2023-2024, aims to transfer large tracts of land to international organizations, multinational corporations, and state-owned entities. This has sparked extreme controversy, as critics argue it will result in the forced takeover of agricultural land from peasants, further entrench military dominance given that the project is being run and administered by the military through the Special Investment Facilitation Council and intensify water disputes, which have already fueled a movement in Sindh against the construction of canals on the Indus River intended to supply water to these corporate farms.Discussions centered around key demands: removing the monopoly of multinational companies on seeds, adopting indigenous agricultural practices that center peasants and their historically passed-down knowledge, revising market rates which are currently highly disproportionate and unfavorable to low-level peasants to fair and profitable levels, and devising a concrete strategy to resist corporate farming.
Speaking to The Students Herald, PSC President Ali Abdullah Khan said, “The current government is hell-bent on taking everything from the people, and we have seen it with the privatization of schools and colleges, the privatization of BHUs, and now corporate farming. The main idea behind all of this is to hand over control of every state institution to private entities for profit generation, which echoes the neoliberal mode of thinking of this regime. What the current regime does not understand is that this will wreak havoc on people’s lives, as they are already battling high inflation and unemployment.”
PSC Secretary-General Eqbal Khan stated that the time has come for a united front against such oppressive government policies, where students, peasants, and workers will mount a joint resistance to battle this oppressive takeover of people’s property and rights.
