The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leadership had brainstormed for days before it picked Saharanpur, the sugar bowl of Uttar Pradesh (UP), to mark the two-year celebrations of the Narendra Modi government at the Centre.
The prime minister's rally, with Home Minister and former Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Rajnath Singh by his side, was held with one eye on the UP Assembly polls slated for early 2017. Both Modi and Singh sent a message to not just the influential sugarcane farmers of western UP but to those across the country that the government is committed to their welfare. The assessment of party President Amit Shah and his close advisors is that Modi's public rally in Saharanpur achieved its objectives. The 'Modi, Modi' chants were back and the response to the rally, particularly among the youth, was evident that brand Modi remains intact.
It invigorated a demoralised state leadership to become battle ready. The public response indicated that BJP could emerge as the single largest party in the polls. The rally ground had posters, which declared BJP's mission of winning 265 plus of the 403 seats. The party, with its focus on farmers, is trying to woo the dominant Jat community of western UP and the peasants among the non-Yadav backward castes and non-Jatav Dalits. BJP's local Jat leader Sanjeev Balyan, a Lok Sabha Member of Parliament from neighbouring Muzaffarnagar and Union minister of state for agriculture, led the preparations for the rally.
BJP leaders dispute that Saharanpur was the launch of the party's poll campaign, but don't deny that the choice was as much to showcase the government's pro-farmer steps as to underline its efforts to reduce the stress on sugarcane farmers. "UP is an important state. It needs deliverance from the poor governance the cocktail of Samajwadi Party (SP), Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) and Rashtriya Lok Dal has unleashed in the past 15 years. There is a collapse of law and order. The condition of power and water supply and roads is abysmal," Shrikant Sharma, BJP's national secretary said. BJP's last government in UP was in 2002 with Rajnath Singh as the chief minister.
Sharma points to several steps from crop insurance to irrigation scheme launched by the PM. But, the Modi government has taken a series of steps specifically to bring succour to sugarcane growers and the sugar industry of Uttar Pradesh.
There are around 120 sugar mills in UP. Over 40 per cent of which are located in western UP, making it the largest organised industry in the state. UP is India's second largest sugar producing state in the country and home to some of biggest names in the sector - Bajaj Hindustan, Balrampur Chini Mills, Dhampur Sugar, etc.
In a year, the cane price payable to farmers has been in the range of Rs 60,000 - 65,000 crore. In 2014, when the National Democratic Alliance government took over, the industry was faced with a crisis of arrears of cane payments.
The cane arrears have been brought down from Rs 14,000 crore to Rs 780 crore, with arrears in UP reduced to Rs 191 crore. The Centre also came up with a new policy of direct payment of cane dues to farmers and one-year moratorium on interest on soft loans, which also provided support to the sugar industry. The Centre also introduced a modified Ethanol Blending Programme (EBP) to achieve up to 10 per cent blending levels with Motor Spirit to help the sugar industry. In the year 2013-14, ethanol supplied for blending was only 38 million litre.
In 2014-15, under the modified EBP, supply increased to 67 million litre and is expected to have reached 130 million litre in 2015-16. As for political symbolism, Saharanpur is 'number one' of the 80 parliamentary constituencies of UP. It was the BJP's influence in western UP after mid-2013 that had helped it win 73 seats, including two of its ally Apna Dal, across UP in 2014 Lok Sabha polls. In August 2013, Muzaffarnagar had witnessed communal riots. Its political opponents had accused the BJP then, as they have now, of electorally benefitting from communal polarisation.
"Such allegations expose the frustration of the SP and BSP. It is their attempt to cloak their failures. We won't let them succeed. We will contest the UP elections on the issue of governance and development," Sharma remarked.
