Rajasthan Assembly Polls 2018: Continued farmer distress could sway votes against BJP

Agriculture still continues to be the principal source of livelihood for more than 55 percent of the Indian population. Despite the involvement of more than 50 percent of the workforce in the agriculture sector, the contribution of agriculture in Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is merely 14 percent.

The agricultural sector has not reached its full potential due to small land holdings, over-dependency on monsoon, insufficient irrigation facilities, cheap credit and insurance etc.

A total of 12,602 persons involved in farming sector (consisting of 8,007 farmers/cultivators and 4,595 agricultural labourers) have committed suicides in 2015, as per a National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) report.

According to figures released by the government for 2016 — the latest year for which data is available — farmer suicides have come down to 6,351 from 8,007 in 2015, marking a drop of 21 percent. In addition, the data has pointed out that 80 percent of farmers killed themselves in 2015 because of bankruptcy or debts after taking loans from banks and registered microfinance institutions.

In 2015, Rajasthan lay in the category of ‘up to five farmer suicides in a year’. However, this number escalated quickly in the last couple of years, especially in May 2018 when prices of the garlic crop hit rock bottom because of bumper produce.

Farmers had to sell their crop at throw-away prices with prices dropping by Rs 200-700 per quintal. Five farmers from the Hadoti region committed suicide in May alone. The Hadoti region comprises Kota, Bundi, Baran and Jhalawar districts.

Even though Rajasthan State Co-operative Marketing Federation Ltd’s (RAJFED) market intervention scheme is in place for such circumstances, it didn’t seem to be enough. The opposition Congress slammed the ruling BJP for “turning a blind eye towards farmer suicides and not even acknowledging them”; whilst the ruling BJP maintained that the suicides were not because of debt.

In June this year, Rajasthan Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje announced a farm loan waiver worth Rs 8,500 crore, writing off loans up to Rs 50,000 for small and marginal farmers. She had also made an ambitious promise, “By the end of this year, we would have given interest-free farm loans worth up to Rs 80,000 crore, which would be the highest in the country.” Ambitious, because the BJP government in Rajasthan struggled to arrange the money after NABARD (National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development) refused to give credit for farm loan waiver.

But the farmers on the ground have not been satisfied by the waiver. They want more. They want the government to implement Swaminathan Commission’s recommendations while calculating the Minimum Support Price (MSP) that includes the cost of production from the farm to the market and the presumed cost of land. In addition, farmers have been demanding a guarantee of procurement and lowering the cost of inputs such as water, fertilizer and power.

Many reports have suggested that there is growing disenchantment among farmers over the execution of the Centre's proposal to hike MSP.

Economist VS Vyas told the Hindustan Times, “In any case, MSP benefits only 10-12 percent farmers who are able to sell their produce. The government neither has a proper procurement infrastructure nor proper storage facilities.”

This disenchantment could cost the ruling party a hefty chunk of voters. In fact, in the Gujarat assembly elections that took place last year, the urban-rural divide was evident. The rural voters had advertently voted for the Congress, to the extent that the Grand Old Party wrested the Saurashtra belt from the BJP.

In the bypolls that happened in Rajasthan immediately after the Gujarat assembly elections, the Congress snatched all three seats—Alwar and Ajmer Lok Sabha seats, and the Mandalgarh assembly seat – from the BJP.

This was a sign that the rural voter base was shifting from the ruling BJP to the Congress, and a warning to the saffron party that the same pattern could project itself on a much larger scale.

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