Click to play videoNew Delhi: Even before Finance Minister P Chidambaram delivers what is expected to be a rural-focus budget, the political war on who will claim the credit for standing by the Indian farmer has begun.
Everybody is vying for the farmer's attention in the election season, and therefore on the eve of a politically sensitive budget, there was pandemonium that the Speaker could not control.
Over the past few days, competitive populism has crippled Parliament. Even Amethi MP Rahul Gandhi did his bit to ensure that the voice of the countryside was not ignored.
“NREGA is a good programme. I have given seven suggestions to the Prime Minister. There should be centralised monitoring and the states should be coordinated better,” Rahul Gandhi said.
The worry for the other parties is that the Rs 32,000-crore loan waiver may tilt the scales in favour of the government. And that is why the political pitch has been quite shrill long before the Congress can claim any credit.
“Even if you double or triple the credit relief, it’s important to find out what the impact is on the ground,” former finance minister and BJP leader Yashwant Sinha said.
Even the Third Front, which never flaunted a national agriculture agenda, has jumped on to the bandwagon, admitting it's no embarrassment to be on the same boat with the BJP on this issue.
“BJP is with us, everybody is with us...the whole nation is with us,” Samajwadi Party MP Shahid Siddiqui said.
Equally strident, the Left, which insists that the Congress is planning a last-minute eyewash after consistently ignoring the farmer for the past four years, has a demand straight out of the Common Minimum Programme.
“Government should invest more in agriculture, ensure that institutional credit flows to the farmer and that they are not at the mercy of money lenders,” CPM Politburo Member Sitaram Yechury said.
It's battleground agriculture. The political parties are convinced that the elections are going to be won or lost in the countryside. The country's 70 per cent rural population will decide who will form the next government. And perhaps, that can explain this mad scramble to get a thumbs-up from the farmer.
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