Amid farmers’ unrest, BJP launches farm outreach prog for dialogue with villagers

Lucknow: The Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) 23-day ‘gram parikrama’ campaign that started from western Uttar Pradesh on Tuesday (almost overlapping the farmers’ stir 2.0 with demand for MSP law at its core), now has an additional focus of factoring views of about 50,000 villages in UP to be incorporated in the party’s manifesto for the 2024 Lok Sabha polls.

Muzaffarnagar, from where the BJP launched its village yatras, was the epi-centre of the year-long farmers’ unrest against the now repealed farm laws and coincidentally, the region is again warming up to fresh unrest.

From identifying supporters in each village to making “newer friends,” the BJP’s rural outreach plan includes ‘padyatra (footmarches)’, engaging in local rural symbolism by visiting the ‘kul devta (local deity)’, worshipping cows and tractors in each village -- a mix of Hindutva and farm sentiments – and holding jan chaupals (rural gatherings).

With party campaign vehicles playing up “Modi ki guarantee (Modi’s word)” to catch rural ears, the party’s farmers’ wing would seek to connect with farmers through the campaign till March 5. In all, the yatras would travel to nearly 2173 ‘gram panchayats’ (village or group of villages divided into smaller units called wards) each day and by the end, if the plan translates into reality, the BJP would have connected with nearly 50,000 villages across the state.

“We will collect feedback from farmers and the rural populace and send it to the party’s central unit for being factored in the ‘sankalp patra (manifesto)’ for 2024 Lok Sabha polls. As you know, we call the manifesto a sankalp patra for a reason, as it becomes a commitment for us,” said UP BJP’s farmers’ wing chief Kameshwar Singh.

The BJP’s strategy to control any damage arising out of the fresh unrest is two-fold. It plans to use the rural outreach to connect with farmers and explain the double engine governments’ efforts to improve the lot of farmers and rural populace while simultaneously questioning the timing of the farmers’ stir.

“If you recall, the campaign against farm laws started generating heat close to 2022 UP polls and now again, the campaign has picked up with the 2024 Lok Sabha polls round the corner . The stir ostensibly is for an MSP law, but shouldn’t they also tell how the support price has automatically gone up manifold since 2014 when Modi assumed office,” said Singh.

The party is also factoring in the impact of its near-final pre-poll pact with RLD, a party largely of Jats, an OBC community, to which majority of farmers in west UP belongs . In the 2022 UP polls, RLD chief Jayant Chaudhari along with Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav toured west UP to administer ‘anna shapath (grain pledge)’ among farmers to bare their resolve of keeping the BJP out. Though the BJP, riding on Modi’s appeal and pro-poor connect and chief minister Yogi Adityanath’s face won a rare second consecutive term, the SP-RLD alliance had its impact in the farmer-focused Jat belt of west UP.

Meanwhile, the Congress on Tuesday tried to seize the political opportunity with party’s top leader Rahul Gandhi promising farmers an MSP law if it was voted to power, a development that the Samajwadi Party, the Congress’ partner in the larger opposition alliance, feels is hard to ignore.

“No matter how you see it, the farmers’ agitation has indeed ensured that the MSP issue got the political attention it deserves. The Congress has promised an MSP law if it is voted to power and now the BJP would be under pressure to clear its stand on the subject rather than resort to ambivalent, diversionary tactics,” said Samajwadi Party leader Sudhir Panwar, who hails from west UP.