NEW DELHI: “Congress ka haath, kisan ke saath”, (Congress is with the farmers) is likely to be the main 2019 poll plank of the grand old party which feels that widespread rural distress could result in undoing of the BJP-led NDA at the Centre.
“Discontent is simmering across rural India due to the skewed policies of the Modi government. The farm sector has suffered a lot but the Centre is only paying lip service to them,” a Congress insider said, adding that the issue was close to party chief Rahul Gandhi’s heart, who believes addressing farm crisis has been a key failure of the Centre.
The Congress, he said, plans to take the up the issue across all the states to make the farmers aware about the tall promises made by the PM that never saw any implementation on the ground.
Speaking on the government’s move to increase the minimum support price (MSP) for crops, a senior AICC functionary said: “One, the revised MSP is too little and too late as it is not based on the Commission for Agricultural Cost and Prices report 2018, second the revised MSP will be paid only in 2019 and third GST on various farm equipment has further pushed up the input cost.”
“The politics behind the MSP hike announcement is clearly a play against the emotions of the 62 crore farmers in the country,” he added.
Accordingly, state Congress units in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Odisha, Uttar Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Bihar and Haryana have been asked to mobilise farmers through awareness drives in the run up to the next Lok Sabha polls.
Another party manager said the attempt is to make the farmers aware that agricultural growth in real terms has actually dropped during the Modi government as compared to the previous UPA but still a lot of false assurances were being sold to the community by the ruling dispensation.
Also, the recent loan waivers given by the Congress governments in Punjab (Rs 24,000 crore) and Karnataka (Rs 34,000 cr), and the mega loan waiver (Rs 70,000 cr) given by the UPA in 2008 are being cited as examples of the grand old party’s commitment to improve the farming community.
“Farmers have been at the receiving end of the BJP government at the Centre and in states where compensation cheques worth a few rupees have been given to farmers,” said a Karnataka Congress leader. “The farmers will not forget this.”