How Vote Reflects Farmers’ View on India’s BJP’s Agrarian Policy Amid Climate Change

By Umar Manzoor Shah Reprint | | Print |

Political parties often play lip service to climate change, but farmers in India, faced with unpopular policies and uncertainty in their livelihoods due to climate change, ensured their views were heard during the recent general elections.

Farmers in Kashmir sow rice crops. Farmers voted against the ruling BJP because of its unpopular policies and lack of support, as uncertain weather conditions impact their livelihoods. Credit: Umer Asif/IPS

SRINAGAR, Jul 15 2024 (IPS) - On June 4, Ram Das, a 65-year-old farmer from India’s northern state of Haryana, was anxiously waiting for the results of the country’s general elections. It was early morning when he left his home and, along with his fellow villagers, congregated near a tea stall that had a transistor set playing the election results.

By 11 in the morning, Das had already sipped three cups of tea and smoked a few cigarettes. His anxiety was plummeting as the results hinted at a decreasing number of seats for India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). He, along with the entire hamlet, had voted against the Narendra Modi government. “The farmers are not happy at all. We wanted to teach this government a lesson, and that is what we did,” Das told Inter Press Service. 

Despite securing a third term in government, the BJP’s overall election performance was described as a “shock” to Prime Minister Narendra Modi by several media sources. The party fell short of its goal of winning 400 out of 543 seats, managing to secure only 240 seats compared to 303 in the last elections that were held in the year 2019. Opposition parties saw significant success in states with large farming populations, such as Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, Maharashtra, Punjab, and West Bengal. Consequently, the BJP had to rely on the 28 cumulative seats from its allies to form the government.

An infographic of the number of seats won by India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the 2019 and 2024 elections for Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, and Punjab have the largest farming populations. The blue bars represent the 2019 elections, and the red bars represent the 2024 elections. The numbers on top of the bars indicate the number of seats won by the BJP out of the total seats available in each state. Credit: Umar Manzoor Shah/IPS

What went wrong and where?

When Narendra Modi first took office in 2014, he promised to reform the agriculture sector and double farmers’ incomes. However, government data from 2022 shows that farmers still live in squalid conditions, earning just Rs 28 ($0.34) per day.

Government data reveals that between 2018 and 2022, a staggering 53,478 farmers took their own lives, overwhelmed by mounting debt, inadequate compensation for their produce, and unpredictable weather conditions. This means 36 farmers were killing themselves every day during this period. “The numbers could be much higher than what is being projected in the government data. This could be the tip of an ice-berg. Many farmer suicides go unreported and never find place in government files,” says Abinav Sinha, a civil society activist based in Indian state of Uttar Pradesh.

In 2020, Modi’s government enacted three controversial agricultural laws without consulting farmers’ groups. This move sparked a massive year-long protest, as farmers feared the laws would lead to increased corporatization of agriculture and the elimination of state-backed protections, such as the minimum support price and the procurement of farm produce by state agencies.

The government ultimately repealed the controversial agricultural laws, but not before enforcing a severe crackdown on the protests. Authorities arrested farmers, barricaded highways to prevent them from reaching New Delhi, and deployed shotguns, pellets, and drones to disperse tear gas on unarmed protesters. As per the various farmers’ associations, over 570 farmers were killed during the protest.

In February of this year, farmers once again took to the streets, this time demanding legal guarantees for a minimum support price (MSP) for crops, among other issues. However, negotiations with government officials failed to yield any conclusive results.

This was the reason that the farmers associations across the country galvanized their efforts into political action and unanimously resolved to vote against the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

June 4: The D-Day

Farmers like Das from Haryana were one amongst the thousands of other farmers who didn’t allow the BJP candidates to even enter their villages for the campaigning. “They were ruthless for us when we sought the rollback of the draconian farm laws. How on earth should we vote for them? We will not even allow them to campaign here,” Das said.

On June 4, this year, election results were announced, and the country was shocked to find the states with a considerable amount of agrarian population voting against the BJP.

In Rajasthan, where the BJP had secured a victory in the state government last December, it won 14 out of 25 seats in the recent elections, a significant drop from winning all 25 seats in 2019.

In Uttar Pradesh, a state where 65 percent of the population relies on agriculture, the BJP managed to win just 33 out of 80 seats, a sharp decline from the 62 seats it secured in 2019 and 71 in 2014.

In Haryana, known as India’s breadbasket, the BJP’s count dropped to five seats out of the 10 available, compared to winning all 10 seats in 2019. The opposition Congress claimed the remaining five seats.

In Punjab, a leading producer of rice and wheat, the BJP failed to win any seats, drawing a blank in the state.

Government Cannot Ignore Climate Change Now

Pranav Shankar, a climate change activist based in New Delhi, told IPS that the general elections in India this year have shown a considerable trend that cannot be ignored, downplayed or undermined. “The farmers have spoken out.  This is the reality. To date, the government has ignored the importance of the farming community. From now on, the government has to remain assiduous towards the farmers’ needs and take measures to tackle climate change that is wreaking havoc in the country and putting the farmers in distress,” Shankar said.

He added that more than 33 electoral officers were killed due to heat stroke during the national elections in India this year. “No one talked about them. Even the government itself seems to have forgotten about those poor souls. This is all very unprecedented,” Shankar said.

Note: This feature is published with the support of Open Society Foundations.

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