Farmers See Modi’s Budget as All Promise, No Delivery

Farmer Ram Pal Singh voted for Narendra Modi’s promise of “better days” in 2014’s general election, but he won’t be backing the prime minister again even after last week’s Budget promised more aid to farmers.

Growing discontent in rural areas, home to two-thirds of the country’s 1.3 billion people, bodes ill for Modi as he tries to bounce back from a heavy defeat in the Bihar elections last year and build a support base to keep power in the 2019 general elections.

Yet critics say most of the extra spending is in fact an accounting entry that shifts the cost of an interest subsidy to the agriculture budget that was previously borne by the finance ministry.

Singh, whose 21-acre (8.5-hectare) plot is big by normal standards said,

Rural Distress

Two failed monsoons, and sudden unseasonal rains, have caused widespread crop damage across northern India. Debt-laden farmers like Singh say low state purchase prices and a lack of compensation for crop losses are worsening their plight.

Singh lost over Rs 3 lakh over the past two years because of severe damage to his wheat and sugarcane crops in the Ghaziabad district of Uttar Pradesh, 30 miles (50 km) east of New Delhi. It has left him with debts of more than Rs 60 lakh and despair has driven him to think of selling his land.

Singh, 60, who does not want his grandchildren to work in the fields said,

Last month, farmers went on the rampage in neighbouring Haryana state to protest a lack of economic opportunity. Thirty people died and saboteurs cut metropolitan Delhi’s main water supply.

“The Budget may give you an illusion the government has tried to address the problems faced by farmers,” said independent food and trade policy analyst Devinder Sharma. He called instead for a package of “immediate assistance” to stop a spate of suicides by farmers from spreading.

Modi last year promised higher compensation for crop losses, but more than a dozen farmers interviewed by Reuters on a field trip said they had received no relief. Many have taken out more loans or sold cattle to tide themselves over.

All but one said they will not support Modi in next year’s poll in Uttar Pradesh, home to 200 million people.