By Amit Pandey
My government is committed to the welfare of farmers My prime minister is concerned to double the farmer’s income. We consider agriculture to be an enterprise and want farmers to produce more on the same land and also get better return from their produce.
Arun Jaitely made this announcement as part of his presentation of the new budget. After four years of failure, the government used the budget to hail its newest schemes designed to improve the welfare of farmers. Jaitely announced an increase to the MSP of 1.5 times more than its current cost, as well as Rs 2000 crore for the Agri-Market Development Fund. Apart from this, the National Bamboo Mission was strengthened and the Agricultural credit was raised to Rs 11 lakh crore.
Why the budget is important for rural voters
BJP’s narrow victory in the Gujarat state election is helping the party to read the pulse of rural voters. In Gujarat, the BJP won scarcely 51 rural seats out of 118. Despite this, its rival Congress had a gain in rural areas, with 88% of Congress leaders in Gujarat coming from rural areas. BJPs winning margin in rural areas declined to 16,483 votes from 16,688 in 2012. Inadequate crop prices and unfulfilled promises by the BJP government are the reason of this rural distress.
Within the space of one year, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan will be holding their elections. Both of these states have a large rural population that will decide the states political future. These elections will also affect the BJP’s chances going into the 2019 national election. Many national surveys are also showing the same anti-BJP trend in rural areas. A survey by Lokniti-CSDS concluded that 53% of farmers are not happy with the Modi government’s action on farmers issues. When it comes that which party is seen as caring the most about farmers, BJP and Congress are neck-and-neck with each other at 22%.
Is this a realistic budget?
After holding the reins of Government for several years, Modi is still repeating his promise to double the income of farmers by 2022. Recently the BJP government formed the Ashok Dalwai committee to look into this issue. The committee said that government needs 6.4 lakh crore more in investments in order to keep the promise. But this years allocation has only increased by 4,845 crore. So the 2022 dream remains just that.
Abhijet Sen recently criticised the Prime Minister on his rural policies, saying, He talked about Rs 11 lakh crore going to agriculture, but thats not the number in the budget document. Obviously whats happening is that most of what hes talking are off-budget items, mainly through NABARD or other banking systems. So these are not costs being incurred by the government, but expected to be incurred by somebody else.
Adding to this, Ashok Gulati, a professor of agriculture at ICRIER, raised the question over problems with MSP. He said, One needs clarity on whether the promise of the MSP at 50% above cost is based on C2, comprehensive cost, or A2, the paid out cost. If they are talking of 50% increase over comprehensive cost, that would require, in paddy, an increase of about 45% in the MSP. Can they do it? In a single year? I dont think so
With less than one year left until the next Lok Sabha election, BJP is not missing any chance to woo the rural vote which constitutes a major part of its base. The latest ‘pro farmer budget’ is the epitome of BJP’s approach. However, given the many failings of the BJP’s rural policies so far, it will be interesting to see whether the party’s effort to polish its pro-farmer image will work before 2019.
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