The conference resolved to strike work on December 11 to press their demand, among other issues, scrapping the two experts committee reports in support of the countrywide general strike called by the National Platform of Mass Organisations (NPMO) the same day.

Harish Rawat, who was re-elected president for a two-year term, said that if the Gupta Committee recommendations were implemented they would dilute the entire mandate of Nabard as the apex agricultural and rural development bank.

He called for stepping up public investment for infrastructure developemnt and research in the farm sector, increasing credit for poor peasants, providing marketing facilities, ensuring remunerative prices and introducing a comprehensivecrop insurance scheme.

The association earlier passed a resolution opposing "the sweeping changes proposed in the name of economic reforms and liberalisation which have benefited only a few affluent people and not the common man."

Expressing concern at the systematic dismantling of the edifice of rural credit institutions, All India Reserve Bank Employees' Association (Airbea) general secretary Samir Ghosh said that while the flow of refinance towards farm mechanisation was going up, that towards the minor irrigation was going down. He stresed the need for a socially-responsible co-operative sector to uplift the lot of the rural people.