Deepak Laad
It is clear as day that the two main planks of the ruling party’s election campaign in the forthcoming general elections will be Jawan and Kisan. The surgical strike 2.0, recently carried out by our army deep into the enemy territory, is being appropriated by the ruling party as its own achievement and that too as Modi’s. Post strike as PM Modi covered himself in glory Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman was almost invisible.
The ongoing skirmishes in the valley and major flashpoint of the ‘Pulwama’ proportions necessitate retaliatory actions from our side in its wake. Our government should have shown prudence and made higher budgetary allocations but the sight of long term measures was clearly lost. Though the defense budget was enhanced by 8% to Rs 3.18 lakh crore over the present allocation of Rs 2.95 lakh crore, it forms a minuscule part of projected GDP @1.50%. Now out of this Rs 3 lakh plus crore, two lakh crore will go towards revenue expenditure leaving only Rs 1 lakh crore available for capital expenditure towards defense assets acquisition and modernization of weapons and equipment. There is urgent need to modernize the equipment to keep them in operational preparedness as now the situation between the two warring nations is a tinderbox. The allocation falls grossly short as part of it will be eaten up by possible unfavorable currency exchange rate and inflation. The government that is using the bravery of the defense forces towards its political objective to retain power, forgets that today 68% of the army’s equipment almost fall in ‘vintage’ category. We have lost six precious lives of air force personnel when the helicopter crashed in Srinagar within minutes of take off supposedly due to technical snag, the day Pakistan violated our air space.
The nation and the government paid rich tributes to the sacrifices of the para military force ‘martyrs’ but the same government is not ready to accord them ‘martyr’ status in official records so as to recognize their sacrifices on par with the martyrs of the three services -- Army, Navy and the Air force. There are ten lakh personnel serving in seven para-military forces. When the oddity was challenged in the High Court in order to give the para-military martyrs their dues, in its affidavit government opposed it hiding behind the existent definitions. Actually granting them the status would have been a better way of commemorating the martyrs rather than the dramas eulogizing their sacrifices at the public meetings by the self-serving ministers and politicians.
Last week the retirees, who served in para military forces, were in the nation’s capital agitating for their demands and the government did not even take cognizance of their presence there. It’s a case of manifest duplicity on the part of this government.
Coming to kisan now. In Punjab the distraught farmers pitched their tents right on the railway track for six days pressing for their same old demand for minimum support price (MSP) for their produce, as recommended in Swaminathan report. The day the government announced annual subsidy of Rs 6000 to farmers with land holding of two hectares it was clear that it was done with an eye on their votes in the forthcoming elections. So the farmers would be heading to election booths with first such cumulative credit of four months received in their accounts, fresh in their minds. This was inspired by the ‘Rayatu Bandhu’ scheme of CM K Chandrashekhar Rao of Telangana, where the farmers having land holding of two hectares are eligible to get up to Rs 20,000 annually. Rao’s party had stupendous success in recent Telangana assembly elections, so Modi too is dreaming of replicating it, with his own scheme, for his party in the forthcoming Lok Sabha elections.
Apart from this populist dole the government has done nothing of consequence for the farmers. The farmer is feeling distressed by falling prices of the produce. He has been expecting the government to come up with some concrete policy to support the rates. Instead of addressing this issue to find a long-term solution, the government resorted to populist measure of offering sop in election times.
Holding down the rate of retail inflation during last 22 months has been touted by the government as its achievement. In reality this reduced farmers’ income. So the promise made by PM to double the farmers’ income by 2022 is turning out to be another ‘jumla’. Simply announcing MSP for the produce without checking the ground realities is not going to solve the problem.
The government that is desperately trying to manage the fiscal deficit, doesn’t have the requisite financial outlay to procure the produce so the farmer is left at the mercy of middlemen and mafia in the market. The government has failed to come up with proper beneficial export policy when farm sector is faced with excessive agricultural
production.
The government is using jawan and kisan for political mileage, in reality it hasn’t done anything creditworthy for either.
