In the 2018 assembly elections, Congress had won 114 of the 230 seats in MP and 99 of 199 seats in Rajasthan, ousting the Shivraj Singh Chouhan and Vasundhara Raje’s governments respectively. BJP was just a few seats behind with 109 in MP and 73 in Rajasthan.

Cut to 2019 LS polls, Congress got just 1 of the 29 seats in MP and none in Rajasthan! All the other seats of MP and 24 of the 25 seats in Rajasthan went to Narendra Modi-led BJP. The remaining one seat of Rajasthan went to Hanuman Beniwal, founder of Rashtriya Loktantrik Party.

Barring Chhindwara, MP, that returned the sole Congress candidate Nakul Nath, Chief Minister (CM) Kamal Nath’s son, the BJP swept all the seats including the Guna seat, where heavyweight Jyotiraditya Scindia lost by a big margin. Notably, it will be the first time that LS will be without a member from the Scindia family.

This has been Congress’ worst ever performance!

It is significant to note that Congress had come to power in both the states in 2018 due to the severe agrarian crisis and farmers’ distress. Rahul Gandhi’s poll promise of waiving farm loans of up to Rs two lakh within 10 days of forming the governments, including in Chhattisgarh, was a major factor behind its victory.

In MP, 16 of the 29 constituencies are farmer-dominated while agriculture has always been a crucial poll issue in Rajasthan, where about 70% of the population lives in villages.

A year before the assembly elections, both the states had witnessed massive protests by farmers with a strong anti-BJP wave. In 2017 in MP, the Mandsaur constituency had become an epicentre of agrarian protests, which even led to the death of six farmers. Consequently, the then CM Shivraj Singh Chauhan launched the Bhavanter Bhugtan Yojna, which promised to pay farmers the difference between the average sale price and the government mandated minimum support price (MSP). However, farmers alleged that the scheme only benefited the big farmers with bargaining power. Eventually, the BJP lost.

Immediately after coming to power, Kamal Nath and Ashok Gehlot, cleared a proposal for waiving farm loans, as promised, in MP and Rajasthan respectively. The entire farming community was euphoric and started applying for the waivers. However, the excitement was short lived!

Soon after the scheme kicked in, there were reports of scams by the banks with some farmers alleging that their names were included in the list of defaulters even when they hadn’t taken a loan or the loan amount was higher than the original amount. There have also been allegations that not a single farmer has benefited from this waiver as yet. This created immense resentment among the farmers and they started losing faith in the Congress.

In fact, Rajasthan farmers even threatened to launch an agitation against Ashok Gehlot’s government, alleging it has failed to waive entire farm loans and implement the Swaminathan Committee’s recommendations on declaring MSP for farm produce at 1.5 times the input cost.

“The Congress has failed to fulfil its promises; they will have to pay a price in the Lok Sabha polls,” said Amra Ram of the All India Kisan Sabha, which led the 2018 protest.

Taking advantage of this situation, BJP launched the PM-Kisan scheme on February 24, 2019, which promises to provide income support of Rs. 6000 per year in three equal instalments to small and marginal farmer families having combined land holding/ownership of upto 2 hectares. The first installment of Rs. 2000 was distributed just before the Model Code of Conduct (MCC) came into effect. This seems to have worked out for the BJP, especially in the two states where the farmers were disappointed with Congress’ failure.

“Because of the Long March and other protests, the BJP was forced to acknowledge farmers issues. Some last minute actions, like the PM-Kisan scheme and a high-pitch campaign may have helped to appease farmers. Some farmers would have also been impacted by the ultranationalist campaign of the BJP,” said Vijoo Krishnan, a leader of the All India Kisan Sabha. This has reflected in the 2019 election results.

To give a few examples, four of the highly farmer-dominated constituencies in MP, elected a BJP candidate. In Mandsaur, 61.85% went to BJP’s Sudheer Gupta, in Ratlam 49.7% votes went to Guman Singh Damor, in Ujjain, BJP’s Anil Firojiya won with a vote share of 63.21% and in Bhind, another constituency with severe farmer clashes, 54.93% vote went to BJP’s Sandhya Ray.

It seems as if Rajasthan’s farmers are highly dissatisfied with its state government and are now hopeful of some help from the BJP, mainly due to its PM-Kisan scheme, leading to the latter’s sweeping victory. Even the Congress’ NYAY scheme, promising to give Rs. 72,000 annually to the poorest 20% did not succeed in convincing the small farmers. It is nothing short of an anti-incumbency wave!
Notably, the BJP’s 2019 manifesto, promises to extend its much touted PM-Kisan scheme to all the farmers.

All in all, farmers’ distress and the consequent PM-Kisan scheme, Modi’s appeal of nationalism and Congress’ apathy towards the farmers’ concerns along with a directionless campaigning with only anti-Modi speeches and alleged corruption in Rafale deal led to a landslide victory for the BJP.

Yogendra Yadav, president of Swaraj Abhiyan and a leader of the All India Kisan Sangharsh Coordination Committee, rightly said, “Until February, [farmers issues] were very much on the national agenda. But then came Pulwama and Balakot — the perfect ambush. In the end, farmers did not vote as farmers…This is a failure of the farmers’ movements, who failed to politicise the issue sufficiently, as well as of political parties. It is a major setback, a moment to introspect.”

The Rs. 2000 dole indeed worked for the BJP!
 

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The PM KISAN scheme promises Rs. 6,000 per year to farmers and the first instalment has been sent. But all is not well.

According to a recent news report, Modi government’s much hyped scheme of giving small and marginal farmers Rs. 6,000 as ‘income support’ has started functioning and Rs. 5,940 crore have been transferred to 2.97 crore farmers – Rs. 2,000 each as first instalment. Sounds good till you start digging deeper.

Only A Third of Target Farmers Got Money – And Modi Knew It
The report quotes an unnamed “senior agriculture department official” as saying that actually various states had sent data of 4.76 crore farmers out of which “discrepancies” were found in the data of 76 lakh farmers. So, these have been junked. That left 4 crore farmers. Out of that 2.97 crore have been given the dole and the remaining 1.03 crore will get it this month. He is also quoted as saying that the second instalment will also be given out this month to all 4 crore farmers.

The scheme, officially called PM Kisan Samman Nidhi (PM-KISAN), was announced in the Budget Session of Parliament in February this year, with the first instalment for January to March covered under the financial year 2018-19, and subsequent ones in the next financial year 2019-20.

It was also declared with great fanfare that all small and marginal farmers – numbering some 12.5 crore – will get this money. (Modi forgot about the tenant farmers who are all small and marginal and number some 2.1 crore as per estimates.) There have been reports of how quickly the government has moved and how it is supposedly spreading goodwill and cheer among the hapless small farmer communities across the country.

But just about one fourth of the target 12.5 crore farmers have received the first instalment. And, already 76 lakh farmers have been rejected.

Only Handful of States Get All ‘Benefits’
A look at the state-wise breakup provided by the same report brings out a bizarre fact. Of the 2.97 crore farmers who got the money, 1.11 crore or nearly a third were from a single state – Uttar Pradesh. Another 1.15 crore were from five states (Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Telangana, Gujarat and Maharashtra). The rest – 71 lakh – were thinly distributed across the remaining 30 states and Union Territories.
Is this some political ploy or what? It appears that the high-flying scheme is meeting real India in a hurry. The political ploy was the scheme itself – announced just weeks before the Lok Sabha elections and with intent of assuaging angry farmers. But the only way it could have delivered was to identify the small and marginal farmers (those with 2 hectares or less land possessed) quickly before the Model Code of Conduct kicked in.

Now, land records in India are going through a tortuous process of digitisation for several years, since UPA times. There are several problems – infrastructure is not yet in place, lakhs of land disputes are in court, titles are in the name of ancestors, mutations have not been recorded and so on. According to a Parliament reply, among the larger states, Assam, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Haryana, Jammu and Kashmir, Jharkhand, Kerala, Punjab, Tamil Nadu and Uttarakhand are still in the process of digitisation while in the North East, some states haven’t even started yet.

That is why, only 4.76 crore farmers were actually the target in the first instalment, with 76 lakh getting rejected. Of that, money transfer could be affected only for 2.9 crore farmers.

So – take a step back and have a look again. Of the much tomtommed 12.5 crore small and marginal farmers, only 2.97 crore have actually got the paltry Rs. 2,000 and – so says the unnamed official – another 1.03 crore will get it this month.

Why Was PM Kisan Doomed?
Modi has been trying to give the impression that he has ordered the money to be delivered to bank accounts of all the 12.5 crore farmers but some states are creating obstacles. That’s not correct. Most states have not been able to create digital land records, including many of the BJP ruled states and those (like MP and Chhattisgarh) that had BJP rule for 15 years continuously till they lost last December. Modi’s party, the BJP itself is an obstacle to the delivery of this money.

Surely, Modi and his party’s ministers would have known that this was the dismal state of affairs of digital land records and hence it would be impossible to deliver the promise. Yet, they blithely went ahead in claiming that income support will be given to 12.5 crore farmers.
The possibility that the remaining 8.5 crore or so farmers will get the money in this election season is zero. The Election Commission has said that only those beneficiaries whose names were received by the Central Government before the Model Code of Conduct kicked in on March 10 are allowed to get the money. In any case, it is impossible that in this election season any substantial number of digitisations could be added.

Finally, the question is this: does the money transfer to 4 crore farmers really swing the vote towards a beleaguered Modi and his BJP? It is doubtful going by ground reports from across the country. While many farmers are reportedly saying that Rs. 2,000 is nothing considering their losses and debt, there are an equally large number who are angry at not having got anything at all.

Recent opinions by talking heads on TV talk shows and even so called opinion polls are making a forced effort to suggest that PM-KISAN scheme and its meagre charity will create an uptick in popularity. This looks very unlikely. Even among the states where substantial number of farmers have got the dole, Modi and his party are struggling to stem the erosion.

Courtesy: News Click

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