Gujarat Assembly elections 2017: In Patel zone, the angry farmers of Amreli

Farmers in Gujarat say they are also under pressure to pay 5% of their loan as premium for crop insurance — made mandatory for eligibility for the loan.

“No one wants to be a farmer now,” said Sanjaybhai Javia, who owns 25 bighas and was at the marketyard with 25 sacks of groundnut. At the procurement rate of government agency NAFED, he will get Rs 900 per 20 kg. “It is of no use. We should get at least Rs 1,000 per kg cotton and Rs 1,200 per 20 kg groundnut,” said Javia, who does not want his teenage son to be a farmer. “I dread that. I want my son to study. But being a Patidar, even if he scores 85%, he will not get into a medical college.”

Maheswar Chavda cultivates cotton on 15 bighas in Bhavnagar. “Modji had promised Rs 1,500 for 20 kg cotton when the Manmohan Singh government was paying Rs 1,200. But we get only Rs 810 now,” Chavda made a comparison.

Outside the marketyard were chhakdas, carts and trucks in queue to bring in their crop. Following a bumper harvest of groundnut this kharif season, the Gujarat government had announced a procurement target of Rs 500 crore at Rs 900 per 20 kg. Groundnut farmers say they will face a loss while cotton farmers said they suffered a bollworm attack and the price will not cover the cost of production; the labour charge alone for sorting 20 kg cotton is Rs 200.

This anger has added muscle to the Patidar agitation. “What Hardik has been doing is good for Patidars. This government has taken us farmers for granted. We have to teach them a lesson,” Javia said. And Chavda said: “I have been a BJP voter. Now I will vote for the Congress.” He added, however: “It’s just that I want to teach the BJP a lesson. In 2019, I will vote for Modi, but now a change is necessary.”

The resentment comes in a state whose farm sector, which is growing, has been a model for other states. Amreli APMC chairman P P Sojitra, who earned praise from the Prime Minister recently for the new marketyard built at Rs 125 crore, admitted that the farmers’ anger could cost the BJP. “Amreli’s farmers have been producing the best variety of groundnut, wheat and sesame seeds. They wanted more support from the government,” said Sojitra, a former Congressman now in the BJP. “Farmers would have been happy if they had got at least 12 hours’ uninterrupted power during the day. Now they get around 8 hours, sometimes in the day, sometimes in the night.”

Bhupenbhai, a voter in nearby Dhasa town, did not agree that the BJP could suffer major losses in the region. “It is true that Patels are angry, but the BJP still has committed voters and the backing of youngsters,” he said.

In 2012, the BJP had won 40 of the 54 seats in Saurashtra region and the Congress 12. Sojitra worries that the BJP’s tally might come down; he notes that the Congress has done well in recent local elections, even before winning the support of youth leaders Hardik, Jignesh Mevani and Alpesh Thakor.

While Amreli constituency has more than 1 lakh Patel voters, the other four of the district have more than 70,000. The BJP won three of the seats, with the other two going to the Congress and Keshubhai Patel’s GPP (since merged into the BJP).

Now the agitations led by Patel, Thakor and Mevani have “given voice to the simmering anger against the BJP and helped people overcome fear to voice their anguish”, said Amreli seat’s Congress candidate, Paresh Dhanani, a Patel leader who had wrested Amreli from the BJP in 2002, defeating veteran leader Parshotambhai Dhanani.

“Since 2004, the BJP succeeded in diverting anti-incumbency to the UPA [then at the Centre]. Whatever good happened went into the credit of Modi and BJP,” Paresh Dhanani said. “But after 2014, he had no excuse not to fulfil the promises he had made. Good that he got a majority in Lok Sabha, otherwise he would have attributed all his failures to the absence of a majority.”

Dhanani, who counted 105 constituencies as influenced by Patel voters, described Patels as “ never calculative voters but emotional voters”; they had voted the BJP to power even when Kesubhai Patel was removed and replaced with Modi, a non-Patel. While noting that the BJP has weathered previous danger signals in Saurashtra, Dhanani added: “This time, farmers are in unprecedented distress in this region… Voters are worried about the commercialisation of education, and health facilities are in a shambles. Besides, Modiji has lost that emotional connect with voters in Gujarat, whereas Rahul Gandhi has made that.” Dhanani described Gujaratis: “They are born traders, they will do business even if there is not much profit. But if the business goes to a stage that hurts the capital itself, a Gujarati would even ask his father to retire and would take over the business. Today, the note ban and GST have hit the capital.”

Dhanani’s contest is against against the BJP’s Bavku Udhad, who had once left the BJP for the Congress, won two elections on Congress tickets, then returned to the BJP.

On the farmers’ anger, Udhad said, “Look, let them give us in writing their grievances on the compulsory crop insurance, and we will take it up with the government.” Accusing the Opposition of “provoking” farmers, he said, “It is not true that the farmer has to pay 5% of the loan as premium; of that 3% is borne by the Gujarat government. It is also true that some farmers grow cotton and show groundnut for higher claims.”

His campaign, he said, will be centred on vikas and salamati.