Mumbai, 9 April 2014

India’s economic recovery is rooted in the prosperity of its villages, for which an increase in farmers’ income is imperative, Narendra Modi told enthusiastic crowds at Sangli in Maharashtra’s sugarcane belt on Wednesday. This is why the BJP manifesto proposes that the minimum support price for farm produce must be fixed after considering input costs in terms of seed, fertiliser, water and electricity, to which a 50 per cent profit must be added.

This, he reiterated a little later at Sholapur, meets a long standing demand of farmers. The BJP’s Prime Ministerial candidate has, since his formal anointment in September 2013, consistently upheld agriculture as the non-negotiable foundation of the economy, rejecting the post-liberalisation argument that there is no link between agricultural growth and industrial growth. This has now been embedded as the official wisdom and commitment of the BJP and is expected to yield political dividends in view of the decline or retreat of parties hitherto associated with farmer interests.

Reaching out to farmers nationwide, transcending barriers of caste, region, language, and racing against time to touch as many districts as possible, with two phases of voting ending on Wednesday and the third on April 10, Narendra Modi emphasised that India is nothing without her villages and will be destroyed if the villages are destroyed; hence it is imperative that the purchasing power of rural areas be boosted.

Exhorting the people to support Sanjay Kaka Patil (former NCP MLC from Tasgaon and now the NDA candidate from Sangli) and Raju Shetty (Swabhimani Shetkari Sanghatana leader who is standing from Hatkanangale in Kolhapur district), Narendra Modi said he was shocked to see the backwardness of a region that is represented by some of the tallest leaders of the State. Alluding to the Gandhi family at the Centre and the Pawar family in Maharashtra, he said the politics of family (vansh-vad) was enfeebling Indian democracy. Some leaders, he said, live like kings and invoke the name of Chhatrapati Shivaji; but those who see Chhatrapati Shivaji astride a horse with a sword by his side have still to understand him fully. The relevant lesson from Shivaji today, the Gujarat leader said, is how he brought water facilities for the farmers.

In a dig at Sharad Pawar’s association with Indian cricket, he said that while Shivaji wielded a sword, today one “Maratha Sardar toota phoota bat le kar ghoom rahe hain”. Lal Bahadur Shastri inspired the farmer to toil in the field, ignoring his hunger pangs and those of his family, to make India self sufficient in food grains. It is therefore painful to see a nation founded on agriculture suffer from farmer suicides. Recalling his recent visit of Vidarbha after hailstorms ruined the harvest, Narendra Modi said he found one to three suicides per kisan family.

At Yavatmal, during the Chai Pe Charcha, he was shocked to learn that there was a crisis of water when the water table was just 10-12 feet below. He said that when he told the farmers that in Gujarat they drew water from 1200 metres below the surface, they replied that “in Gujarat you help the farmers, but here there is no help”. Insisting that water for agriculture must be a national priority, the Gujarat veteran said the farmer would do the rest.

Whistle-blowers like Raju Shetty make Sharad Pawar nervous, Narendra Modi joked, but it is truly shocking that Sangli district that lies on the banks of the Krishna should suffer from lack of water. Charging the Congress president and vice president of doing nothing for farmers, he said Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s ambition to link rivers to take care of the problems of flood and drought would ensure the proper utilisation of water resources. The Narmada, he told the people, reached the borders of Gujarat from Madhya Pradesh. When he became the Chief Minister, he discovered that 7000 villages depended on tankers for drinking water from February onwards, so “we made the longest canal in the world, put a pipeline for drinking water, and now we give 9000 villages drinking water”. The tankers are now a rarity in the region, and the pipeline goes up to the Kutch border where previously the BSF used 900 camels to supply drinking water to the jawans.

At Sholapur, a constituency represented by Union Home Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde, Narendra Modi said that the Congress-NCP treat the people as slaves, but the era when intimidation worked is over and that the UPA had done nothing for the people to deserve being brought to power again. Pointing out that Sholapur is renowned for its textile industry, yet neither Sharad Pawar nor Sushil Kumar Shinde had done anything for the weaver (bunker) community. The Union Home Minister never once thought that he could give the order for making the police uniform to Sholapur weavers, his concern is only to keep ‘madam’ happy and he has risen in life only because of his devotion to the Gandhi family (parivar bhakti) rather than any professional competence, the BJP veteran charged.

Recalling the drinking water crisis in the State, he urged the people to remember the language used by Sharad Pawar’s protégé (Ajit Pawar) on voting day and then vote according to their conscience. He warned, “If you don’t punish these people, they will not reform and will ruin others also”. He derided the LBT (looto baanto tax) in the State and the Congress nomination for Ashok Chavan, who is accused in the Adarsh housing scam.

The Congress and the NCP avoid answering questions about what they have done for the people because they have been repeating the same promises in successive manifestos from 2004 to 2009 and now 2014. For Rahul Gandhi, poverty is a form of tourism, and hence he takes cameramen with him to the homes of the poor and shows the world. Such persons born with a golden spoon in their mouth do not know poverty what it is like when children go to sleep hungry and one has to sleep on cold nights without clothes. Recalling his childhood when he sold tea in railway wagons, the BJP’s Prime Ministerial candidate said that if by chance the tea was cold, people was break the glass and even slap him. The people, he said, have a choice between a person whose father, grandmother, great grandfather was Prime Minister, and man whose family did not even know what a panchayat is. He concluded his Maharashtra tour with a rally at Latur.

In an emotive appeal to the entire State, which votes on April 10, 17 and 24, Narendra Modi said he has come to the banks of the Krishna, to the land of Tilak, Shivaji and Ganesh ji, straight after filing his nomination at Vadodara, and hoped for fulsome support for a robust regime at the Centre. He urged the people to get rid of the limping regime and not let the Congress NCP open their account in the State, but to make the Mahayuti victorious in all 48 seats, to get the su-rajya of Chhatrapati Shivaji. Mocking political pundits who crunch numbers in drawing rooms and television studios, and said they have only to come to his rallies to realise the mood of the nation. As the crowd roared in approval, Narendra Modi said this election is about the mental chemistry of 125 crore Indians, and brushing aside the importance of political parties and candidates, appealed directly to the people to vote for him.

Concluding his Bharat Vijay rally at Bidar, Karnataka, Narendra Modi told ecstatic crowds that kept chanting his name at regular intervals that no country should suffer the misgovernance and frightening corruption that India has suffered in the past 10 years. Lamenting the decline of the famous bidri handicraft of Bidar, he said that a responsive Government would have made this handicraft internationally famous, and said that in Gujarat his regime had taken the humble kite making craft from Rs 35 crore to Rs 700 crore worth industry by simply launching an international kite flying festival! Bidar, therefore, can do so more.

Pointing out that neither the Congress president Sonia Gandhi nor vice-president ever speak on the issues of price rise, corruption, criminalisation of politics and the lack of development under the UPA, but hide their multiple failures behind the mask of secularism, he insisted that they must be made accountable for the unemployment and agrarian crises facing the nation. Invoking the legacy of the great social reformer Basava (Basavanna), the Gujarat veteran urged the people of Karnataka, which votes on April 17, to give the BJP victory in all 28 Lok Sabha seats and elect a strong and decisive Government that can overcome the disabilities of the past 10 years.