Led by Ajit Singh’s Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD), a slew of Opposition parties gathered on Parliament Street on Monday afternoon to not just highlight the post-demonetisation hardships of the agricultural community but also demand that the Modi government use the black money it has collected to waive all farm loans in the country.
Joining Ajit Singh, and his son and former MP Jayant Chaudhary, were other leaders with a following in the farming community — former Prime Minister and Janata Dal-S leader H.D. Deve Gowda, former Union Agriculture Minister and Nationalist Congress Party chief Sharad Pawar and senior Janata Dal-United leaders Sharad Yadav and K.C. Tyagi.
With its Jat following defecting almost en masse to the BJP on a tidal Hindutva wave in the general elections of 2014, the RLD has since been working hard to reclaim its base.
Milling mass of flags
On Monday afternoon, the Jats of western Uttar Pradesh turned a generous stretch of Parliament Street, from close to Parliament House to Patel Chowk, into a milling mass of green and white party flags, sugar cane sticks and white party caps, cheering their leaders.
Indeed, if the gathered Opposition leaders strongly delivered their message on the negative impact of demonetisation — the disruption in the sowing and marriage season, the long lines at banks, the return of migrant labour to the villages with their employers unable to pay them any longer because of the cash crunch etc., the RLD had a special interest — the impending assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh.
A woman leader who addressed the rally said: “The money our mothers and sisters saved for a rainy day has now been tagged as black money.”
Not surprisingly, the RLD chief Ajit Singh received the biggest cheers.
“If outlawing Rs. 1,000 notes was to end black money, why has the government introduced Rs. 2,000? Was it to make it easier to accumulate black money?” he asked.
‘People’s pain’
Taking a swipe at Prime Minister Narendra Modi, he said, “If speeches could fill stomachs, he would be the greatest leader. It is time he started understanding people’s pain, the fact that of the nine crore farmers in the country, over 50 per cent are in debt. He has increased the salaries of government servants, waived the loans of industrialists but does not have the money to waive loans of farmers.”
