Aarefa Johari - In Gujarat, a strong anti-Modi sentiment brews among disgruntled farmers
Sitting in the shade
of a tree in mid-June, farmers in Jamnagar district’s drought-hit Sumri village
had an animated discussion about inflation and the prices of cotton. “Four years ago,
fertilisers cost Rs 800 per 50 kg, and now it costs Rs 1,375,” said Bhimabhai
Chhaiya, a cotton farmer with three acres of land, who is several lakhs in
debt. “But the price we got for selling cotton last year was just Rs 800 for 20
kg.” The market price of
raw cotton is controlled by the central government, and Rambhai Chhaiya,
another cotton farmer, couldn’t help but compare two governments – the previous
United Progressive Alliance government and the current BJP-led National
Democratic Alliance.
“When Manmohan Singh
was the Prime Minister and Modi was the CM, the cotton rate was Rs 1,400 [for
20kg],” he said. “And Modi kept saying big things – that the rate should be at
least Rs 2,000. Now Modi is the PM and look what he’s done to us – the rate is
as low as Rs 800. At least Manmohan was an educated economist!” The farmers in Sumri
know they cannot control cotton prices, but they are determined that in the
next Gujarat Assembly elections, scheduled for October 2017, they will not vote
for the Bharatiya Janata Party.
Turning tide: In 2014, Narendra
Modi, then the Gujarat chief minister for over a decade, became prime minister
after the Bharatiya Janata Party won the Lok Sabha elections with resounding
support from across the country, especially from his home state. So strong is his
personality cult that even two years after Anandiben Patel took over as chief
minister following Modi’s move to Delhi, the masses in Gujarat still associate
the state’s Bharatiya Janata Party government with Modi alone.
But this isn’t turning
out particularly well for the BJP in Gujarat, as is evident in the unmistakable
anti-Modi sentiment brewing among a large numbers of voters, particularly in
the drought-hit villages of Saurashtra region. The disillusionment
began with agitating Patidars, who blamed the state for reported
police atrocities on Patels after the community rallied for
caste-based reservations in August 2015.
In February, Patidar
leaders openly accused the
BJP of being a communal party that had planted its anti-Muslim ideology in the
state for years, and accused the party of orchestrating the 2002 Godhra train
burning and communal riots in order to retain power in the state elections that
came up later that year. The Patidars took credit for the BJP’s poor
performance in Gujarat’s local body elections last December, and seemed
determined not to vote for the BJP in the 2017 elections.
In June, when Scroll.in visited
villages in Saurashtra’s Jamnagar district, which has been reeling from drought
for three
years now, it was evident that the Patidars were not alone in feeling
abandoned. Farmers across Gujarat said they felt let down by the BJP in
general, and Modi in particular, and added that the many promises the prime
minister made in his speeches were yet to be fulfilled.
‘Gujarat developed
because of good rains’: “There are no Patidars
in the villages around here, but the BJP still lost in our local election last
year,” said Mahesh Aahir, a cotton farmer from Vijarkhi village in Jamnagar.
“They lost because farmers like me are frustrated with how we have been
ignored.” Like many other
villages in the region, Vijarkhi was almost entirely dependent on the monsoon
to fill the reservoir of the Vijarkhi dam, which provided them with water for
drinking and cooking, and for their farms. But the reservoir, which isn’t
connected to any feeder canals, dried up in 2013. Since then, the
village has been dependent on an erratic supply of drinking water from tankers,
and there’s no extra water available for agriculture.
“For years, the
government has been promising us that our reservoir will be connected to canals
from the Narmada dam,” said Aahir, referring to the Sardar Sarovar Dam on the
river Narmada. “But when will that actually happen?” Aahir added: “From
2002 to 2012, Gujarat developed because we had relatively good rainfall – not
because Modi was the CM.” For Aahir and other
farmers burdened by heavy debts and repeated crop losses, any failure of the
state government is directly linked to the figure who helms the central
government.
“The government has
enough money to hold big events like Vibrant Gujarat, but not to connect more
villages to the Narmada,” said Mansukh Mungra, an agro-shop owner in Jamnagar’s
Theba village, and the district head of the Bharatiya Kisan Sangh, a farmer’s
collective. “There is no way we are bringing another BJP government to power in
the 2017 election.”
‘What Digital
India?’ Vibrant Gujarat isn’t
the only scheme spearheaded by Modi that drought-hit villagers are bitter
about. After three
consecutive years of poor rainfall, farmers are experiencing a severe scarcity
of drinking water, fodder for cattle, affordable food grains and employment
opportunities. As previous Scroll.in reports have
shown, the state’s response has been delayed and inadequate. Instead of
declaring a drought, Gujarat declared “semi-scarcity” in 1,100 villages
starting April. Also, at government
ration shops, subsidised wheat and rice are being distributed only after
verifying villagers’ identities using a thumbprint scanner. These scanners work
through online databases, so poor
Internet connectivity often means no ration for those waiting in line.
For Bhimabhai Chhaiya
of Sumri village, this is a clear failure of Modi’s highly-publicised Digital
India campaign that seeks to improve Internet connectivity across the country.
“They make us put our thumbs on scanners and if there is no tower [Internet],
they tell us to go home and come another day,” said Chhaiya. “Is this what Modi
calls Digital India? No network, no ration?” In the same village,
Rambhai Chhaiya hit out at the Sardar Patel Statue of Unity that the Modi
government plans to build near the Narmada dam, at a cost of nearly Rs 3,000
crore. “What does he want to build a statue for?” he said. “Tell him to give
some of that money to us instead – we’ll pay off our loans.”
