Ambitiously allied

 

 

If the index of a meeting's success is public attendance then the massive crowd, including a large number of leaders, present during the Rythu Garjana (roar of farmers), a huge public meeting organised by the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) in coastal Vijayawada, was a roaring success. But, this much hyped congregation of leaders of United National Progressive Alliance (UNPA) failed to achieve what it set out to: putting the farmer at the centrestage of national politics.

The said objective of the meeting was to mount pressure on the Centre to concede the demand for hiking the minimum support price to Rs 1,000 per quintal for paddy and implementation of Dr Swaminathan Commission’s recommendations. But, the glib talk of the leaders, including Mulayam Singh Yadav and Amar Singh (Samajwadi Party), Farooq Abdullah (National Conference), Babulal Marandi (Jharkhand Vikas Morcha), Om Prakash Chauthala (Indian National Lok Dal) and Brindavan Goswami (Asom Gana Parishad), besides TDP supremo N. Chandrababu Naidu, revolved around grabbing power at the Centre. Though all the leaders categorically stated that their alliance is not one of convenience, their rhetoric made it clear that what they wanted farmers to elect them to power in the coming general elections.

Naidu was ambitious enough to step into the role of his father-in-law, the late N.T. Rama Rao (NTR), who had organised a non-Congress Opposition conclave in the same city, Vijayawada, in 1984 on the occasion of Mahanadu, which was attended by almost all the parties including parties of the Right and the Left.

After the assassination of Indira Gandhi in October 1984, Congress swept the mid-term polls throughout the country, but not in Andhra Pradesh. For the first time in the history of Indian Parliament, TDP, a regional party emerged as the main Opposition in the Lok Sabha and NTR became a rallying figure for opposition parties. Later, Both NTR and V.P. Singh were then instrumental in forming the National Front with the former as its Chairman and the latter its Convener.

Circumstances are vastly different this time around. Naidu was voted out of power by a tidal wave of angry farmers in the state during the last state elections in 2004. The small and marginal farmers, in tandem with the landless labourers, who constitute nearly 80% of Andhra’s eight crore people, gave their verdict: the industry-sponsored economic initiatives were anti-poor. The Congress thus won a landslide victory.

Naidu blindly aped the World Bank model of agriculture and impelled huge finances to push an industry-driven agriculture. It destroyed millions of rural livelihoods and aggravated the environmental crisis. Naidu’s Vision 2020 document, in which he idealises tyrannical dictators of Chile, emphasised reducing the number of farmers in the state to 40% of the population. He heavily subsidised agri-business, IT and biotechnology units. In the process, farmers were divested of their meagre land holdings. Andhra Pradesh then made world headlines for the increasing rate of suicides by farmers.

If Rythu Garjana was meant to take up the cause of farmers in the country the impressive turnout at the rally failed to rouse farmers who are yet to recover from huge financial losses.