Farm vs Ram

A late Sunday evening conversation with the genteel Tribhuveneshwar Saran Singh Deo, the scion of the erstwhile Sarguja principality and the head of the Congress’s legislature party in Chhattisgarh, reflects an uncharacteristic animation. “Farmers are holding back their produce,” recounts Singh Deo, with barely concealed excitement. “We’re getting reports from all over that they are waiting for the results before they sell,” Singh Deo says over the phone from his beautiful home town, Ambikapur. In his understated parlance, this is the surest sign of victory in a state where his party has remained out of power for three long terms.

Loosely interpreted, this exchange conveys a buoyed hope in the Congress that the farmers in Chhattisgarh have voted and are banking on its promise in its election manifesto to raise the Minimum Support Price (MSP) of paddy to ₹2,500 per quintal. Although MSPs are fixed at the beginning of the sowing season for the next crop, the farmers in Chhattisgarh believe that there could be an immediate decision by the Congress to raise the price at the time of purchase of the crop, which,for Chhattisgarh’s main Kharif crop paddy, is now.

Number game: Polarisation of votes over religion does not translate into seats because of the low minority population in Chhattisgarh. Image of a polling station being set up in Sukma

The state government began its paddy procurement on November 1 but the arrival in the local mandis has nearly halved this year. The Congress’s manifesto promise of ₹2,500 per quintal is considerably higher than the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party’s offered price of ₹1,750, which the BJP hurriedly topped up with a promise of ₹300 bonus when it sensed farmers’ resentment. The reported drop in the mandis is, at least according to the Congress’s top leadership, the political equivalent of a change in government.

They would know for sure in three days. But Singh Deo and his closest associate in the local unit, general secretary Rajesh Tiwari, who also relayed the same sentiment, could well be over-interpreting the signs.

What is true is that in the three adjoining states of Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan, the Congress is fairly certain that it will oust the incumbent BJP in the Assembly elections — the results of which will be announced on December 11. The common theme that is fuelling the opposition’s expectations against the ruling party’s formidable organisational muscle and the proven credibility of the two long-term chief ministers — Shivraj Singh Chouhan in MP and Raman Singh in Chhattisgarh — is the farmer and his immediate concerns in the largely rural and agriculture-based states. A steady crash in the prices of vegetable and cash crops in the last four years, depressed MSPs for crops such as paddy, and the simultaneous increase in the farmer’s input costs, including price hikes for diesel, pesticides, fertilisers, and the non-availability of urea in some places dominated the political campaign.

Chouhan, by all accounts, is a politically formidable force in MP. In the 2013 polls, he steered the BJP to a stupendous victory of 165 seats in the 230-member Assembly, relegating the Congress to just 58 seats. Five years ago, his victory came riding a wave of successful moves — the chief minister had improved rural connectivity, built markets, helped farmers diversify their crops and scored a double-digit agricultural growth. But in this election, a significant troublesome spot for Chouhan — besides anti-incumbency against individual MLAs — is rural distress pitted against farmers who built their fortunes in his three-term tenure. There is a political contest in MP because of the mounting anger among the restless rural population of land-owning farmers and agricultural labourers.

In Balaghat, the district the state’s powerful Agriculture Minister Gaurishankar Bisen belongs to, the resentment is palpable against the government’s policy measures and pronouncements, in which demonetisation or notebandi stands out for its crushing after-effects.

Looking out: There is a political contest in MP because of the mounting anger among the rural population of land-owning farmers and agricultural labourers

Scores of small and medium farmers in villages such as Tumribat, Malajkhand, Charegaon, Lamta and Chagotola in Balaghat have suffered because of rising input costs and liquidity drying up for cash crops after high-currency notes were demonetised on November 8, 2016. For the farmers, it has been a double whammy — the down payment they received earlier for food crops such as paddy is now carved into infrequent instalments, and the high prices at which they sold their vegetables and fruits have come crashing down.

“Before notebandi , if I sold soya bean, the total payment would be made at one go. After notebandi , I am paid in instalments of ₹6,000. And you cannot imagine the crash in vegetable prices. I earlier sold garlic at ₹85 per kg. Now I don’t get anything more than ₹3-4 per kilo. From ₹70 per kg, tomato has come down to ₹12. The cash flow that was choked after notebandi has never quite been revived,” says Maqbool Ali, a farmer in Balaghat district of Mahakoshal region.

Clearly, the issues rocking these states had little to do with the political debate — around Rafale and Ram Mandir — being carried out elsewhere in the country. Among rural folk, local politicians and campaigners in the silent, leafy hill-towns of Southern Chhattisgarh in districts such as Bastar, Kanker and Kondagaon or the plains of Malwa region in Madhya Pradesh, the conversations were mainly about agricultural distress, depressed prices and farm loan waivers, besides Aadhaar-linked benefit transfers and MNREGA payments. While Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP president Amit Shah have joined the RSS and the VHP in the renewed push for an ordinance for the construction of a Ram temple in Ayodhya, the issue found no resonance on the ground — even among BJP workers — in the states.

“For us, Ram Mandir is to do with our ideology and belief. It is not an election issue,” says Pankaj Jha, a local worker in the Raipur BJP office. The reasons for that may have to do with the fact that the polarisation of votes over religion does not translate into seats because of the low minority population in the two states. Chhattisgarh has a minority population of 3.94 per cent, of which only 2.02 per cent are Muslims; in Madhya Pradesh, minorities form just over 7 per cent of the total population.

But the reason why, despite all indications, the ruling party in the two states cannot be written off is the fact that the BJP is a party that fights till the end with the adequate organisation vigour to win. So, while the national leadership joined the chorus to trump up Ayodhya, the ground-level workers moved in with door-to-door campaign and mobilisation in support of Chouhan’s efforts at addressing local issues and rural distress. Jabalpur Mayor Swati Godbole and her colleague from neighbouring Maharshtra, Rajendra Fadke, believe Chouhan’s “proven credentials”, especially in the field of agriculture, are the steel framework the BJP has against the Congress’s “false claims” and promises.

“The BJP won 25 out of the 38 seats in the Jabalpur division in 2013. We are crossing 30 seats this time. What the Congress is classifying as ‘distress’ is actually the voters’ higher expectations from Shivraj Singh Chouhan and Modiji,” says Fadke, who has been camping in Jabalpur for the last two months.

The BJP, he adds, reached out to the people after six farmers were killed in police firing in Mandsaur last year. “Since the firing in Mandsaur, we have held ‘Jan Ashirwad’ rallies. Our chief minister sat on a fast to appeal to the farmers and they assured him they would not be swayed by the Congress’s lies. Madhya Pradesh is the sunrise state for agriculture, with a double-digit growth under our CM’s leadership. The Congress has nothing to prove against it,” says Fadke, the BJP’s national convenor tasked with educating the people about the Centre’s Beti Bachao Beti Padhao scheme.

His party responded to the Congress’s 116-page ‘Vachan Patra’ (manifesto) promising relief to the farmer, with the offer of a loan waiver, increased MSPs, bonuses, down payments in cash and similar measures. The BJP’s 74-page ‘Drishti Patra’ (vision document) detailed over 100 points related to rural distress, crop prices and welfare schemes.

“In the Jabalpur municipal area, we have constructed 11,000 houses under the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojna. In pouring rain, 5,500 people came for the griha pravesh and the Prime Minister addressed them through video-conferencing. We are not a government that floats on air. People believe what we say,” Godbole says.

While the BJP put its organisational muscle and Chouhan’s tested credibility on the line at the peak of the campaign, the Congress was simultaneously improvising with a better vision for the farming community. Through the campaign, Congress president Rahul Gandhi was being constantly reminded by local leaders that it was not Rafale or Anil Ambani that people wanted to hear about in his public rallies. “We had sent some points about the local concerns to Rahulji,” reveals a Congress leader.

So, in Tikamgarh (MP) on November 24, Rafale was eclipsed by farm loan waivers and MSPs. “Ask the voters in Punjab and Karnataka. We in the Congress do not make false promises,” the Congress president told the crowd.

The PM, of course, has responded with the constant refrain that the Congress president is “lying” and farmers in Karnataka and Punjab, which the party won in the last Assembly elections by defeating the BJP, have been “cheated” with the promise of loan waivers.

Amid the conflicting claims, the reality on the ground is that the BJP is battling three-term anti-incumbency not so much against the CMs in MP and Chhattisgarh but against sitting MLAs, coupled with mounting anger in the rural areas. Some of it is bound to translate into votes against the ruling party.