Agriculture has no safety net
Gujarat shows that parties will pay if they ignore farmers
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The increasingly tion squeeze in India (read prices and economic outside has on GST after been incomes ne that BJP’s The under the are demonetisation. of Farm viability traditionally the tax Congress the bound victory stress. net). schism as big distress well. takeaways A of to is Demonetisa- won growing between farming due have Perishables conducted is a to not Most majority put its clamour from confined India dominance is a agricultural in suffered the and of the for the Gujarat to Bharat informal farm Gujarat in rural a urban sharp business loan is results vote. for sector alone. areas. crash waiv- real. in is ers gress areas. BJP BJP tions across would in in had Same Uttar 2018 promised states be and was Pradesh facing the is the proof 2019 one rural case earlier general of in with anti-incumbency entrenched Gujarat. this the elections. year. Congress It performed Barring rural The in distress. in major next Punjab Karnataka, well budget state The in and rural Con- elec- will the the probably palpable a temporary hike in rural minimum do relief, something discontent. they support are to One protect not prices. can enough the expect While ruling to address more such party loan policies the from waivers structural do the bring now and crisis ings, environmentally of Indian agriculture. unsustainable Growing fragmentation practices in groundwater of land holdand farmers fertiliser do not use, have and income climate protection change are or social some factors. security Indian cover unlike The their younger counterparts generation in in the farmer west. households is even more worried about its future. A 24 year old Hardik Patel emerging as the leader of a powerful but disgruntled farming community is the biggest proof of this. Given the fact that almost half of our workforce is still dependent on farming; such policies are bound to be prohibitively expensive. This is the biggest fault line in India’s political economy. Bharat needs a lot of resources to come even close to the living standards that India enjoys. India is hard pressed to marshal them. Political fortunes are a function of the ability to balance this contradiction.