Last Sunday party chief Amit Shah stood out a sore thumb in poll-bound Karnataka. Farmers cornered him in north-eastern Karnataka’s Bidar district and took him to the cleaners. The real sickle-wallahs were angry at the Modi Government for not walking its talk. They were angry with its failure to fulfil farm-specific promises made during Modi’s 2014 campaign.

The bulky Shah was frequently interrupted. One farmer had to be ejected, the mic snatched away from his fist. Shah faced some tough questions, his responses not carrying the weight to offset criticism.

Shah’s claim that the government has implemented the Swaminathan Commission report, that the minimum support price (MSP) of cost plus 50 percent was already on the table, was met with resistance. The farmers were not amused. The promise was made in 2014 but it was only now, three and a half years later, that the BJP was waking up.

Shah’s response that Finance Minister Arun Jaitley has announced that MSP for kharif and rabi crops will be set at 1.5 times the cost was met with anger. What the budget provided for was a reduction in the cost taken as base to calculate MSP. They are giving 1.5 times based on a lower estimate of cost was the refrain.

The farmers were right. Shah was not lying, perhaps, but he was definitely misleading. That was because Jaitley was misleading in his budget. The FM did not specify 1.5 times of what cost of production. The Commission for Agricultural Costs and Prices (CACP), which declares MSP for eligible crops, has three different definitions of production costs.

Farmers wanted MSP set at 1.5 times C2 – comprehensive cost as recommended by the Swaminathan Commission. Narendra Modi, during his Lok Sabha campaign, promised that MSP will be set at 1.5 times the cost of production. He must not have meant anything other than C2 as MSP for most crops was already higher than 1.5 times the cost of production.

Shah also said that if elected to power in Karnataka, sugarcane farmers would be paid on time, like in Uttar Pradesh. He said in UP sugarcane farmers have been paid on time and all dues for the current season (2017-18) have been cleared. Again, Shah was not telling the whole truth and only half truth. Data shows that only Rs 329 crore has been paid on time – i.e., 2.4 percent of total amount paid and 1.5 percent of total amount unpaid. Farmer organization Bharatiya Kisan Andolan said the BJP government has made very little difference to sugarcane payments in UP.

Shah was also boxed in by farmers for what they called the Modi government’s pro-corporate, anti-farmer tilt. They alleged the BJP-government had money to waive corporate loans of Rs. 17,15,000 crore but no money to waive farm loans of Rs. 12,60,000 crore. They told Shah to his face that it was the farming community, not industrialists, who voted BJP to power. Shah’s response that since coming to power the BJP government had not waived a single rupee of any industrialist did not cut ice with the farmers.

Poor Shah, he must have been keenly aware of the multiple bank frauds worth billions of dollars, involving wealthy industrialists, dogging his government. A few months before the PNB Scam hit the fan, the Modi government had announced a Rs. 2.11 trillion-rupee bank recapitalisation plan for public sector banks to deal with bad loans.

The different yardsticks for corporates and farmers will reverberate during the elections slated in several states this year and during the run-up to the big one next year.

Farmers today are not blind to what’s happening around them. It is a ‘New India’, isn’t it? They see industrialists leading super-luxurious lives on public money and getting off scot-free while farmers burdened with farm loans and failed crops are left with no option but to kill themselves. According to RBI data (2017), the share of agriculture in total outstanding credit from public sector banks was 13 percent, while that of industries and services was 37 percent and 25 percent respectively.

Is it fair to equate farm loan-waivers with bank recapitalisation mechanisms for corporate loan write-offs? Essentially, both are loan-waivers. They are not going to come back. At the end of the day, it will be the tax-payer who will pay for both. Farm-loan waivers salvage agriculture. Bank recapitalisation scheme salvages business failures.

Newly elected MP Amit Shah stood in the Rajya Sabha and made a robust defence of ‘Pakodanomics’ and he was given time and space to speak his piece. The couple of times he was heckled or interrupted, he found a friendly chair coming to his rescue – after all it was his first speech in the Upper House. But in Bidar last Sunday, there was no chair to his rescue. The BJP’s real opposition is not in Parliament, not in the adjournments and walkouts, but in districts like Bidar where flowery speeches and desk-thumping stand no chance faced with stark reality. Farmers distress might become the BJP’s 2019 sorrow.(IPA Service)