Can UPA win polls after farmers' loan waiver?

New Delhi: The Union Budget 2008 seems to have a simple message - get ready for General Elections. But Union Finance Minister P Chidambaram, who presented the please-all Budget on Friday, counters it saying there are elections in the country every year.

His proposal of waiving off loans worth Rs 60,000 crore to small farmers is unprecedented in India but there are no details from where the money is going to come from.

It was the defining moment of Budget 2008-09 and a moment, which will not be forgotten for a long time - neither by the government nor by the Opposition.

With the presentation of the Budget, the election bugle has been sounded.

Congress ka haath, aam aadmi ke saath (Congress' hand is with the common people) was the slogan on which the party came to power at the centre in 2004.

Four years down the line and worried that the aam aadmi might just be drifting away, the party has come out with a please-all Budget on Friday.

But if past precedent is any thing to go by, the masterstoke by Chidambaram may not yield electoral success.

Waiving off farmers’ loans is an old political ploy but it did not work earlier.

Devi Lal tried it in 1990 and failed. Rajiv Gandhi’s loan melas drew huge crowds in the 1980s but they didn’t work, either. So this time, the magnitude of the move has been increased several times.

Chidambaram tried to win over the farmers by announcing a loan waiver of Rs 60,000 crore which is expected to benefit almost 5 crore farmers.

The beneficiaries are small and marginal farmers, who had taken loans from government banks and cooperatives. Those owning less than two hectares can avail of the waiver.

The only hitch is that the scheme is not applicable to those farmers who have taken loans from private moneylenders.

Though the Congress and its allies have applauded the move, but Chidambaram has had his detractors.

Pointing out the thousands of farmers who committed suicide in the past few years, JD(U) leader Digvijay Singh said, "If the government was so keen on protecting the interests of common man, then they should have done this before."

Even now, according to the Finance Minister, "This scheme will be implemented by June."

This means elections won’t go beyond November, for UPA would not want the hype to fizzle out without milking it electorally.

The battle for the next Lok Sabha elections appears to be fought between two Indias – the rural India, being wooed by the Congress, and the urban India, being courted by the BJP.

The aam aadmi versus India Shining debate is yet to be settled.

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