In most States, farmers make up the majority of voters. In Rajasthan, at least 62% of the workforce is employed in agriculture. Therefore, one of the main planks of both the Congress and the BJP’s campaigns in Rajasthan revolved around promises to farmers. Take, for example, the Congress’s promise of a Minimum Price Guarantee Act and the BJP’s guarantee of a specific wheat MSP. Both parties also promised the completion of the Eastern Rajasthan Canal Project (ERCP). As is clear by the campaign approaches of the BJP and the Congress, farmers were thought of as one of the key groups to win the election.
As per the Lokniti-CSDS survey’s data in Table 1, more than a third of the farmers believed their economic condition has improved in the past five years. However, almost half the farmers thought that there has been no change, with more than a tenth believing that it has deteriorated. This contributed to some degree of anti-incumbency sentiments against the Congress government.
The data state that seven in 10 farmers who believe that their economic conditions have improved aligned with the Congress party. The perception that economic conditions remain unchanged is more prevalent among the BJP supporters, with almost half holding this view. Interestingly, almost half of the farmers who believe that their economic conditions have deteriorated voted for the BJP.
Looking at the schemes of the Congress for farmers in particular (Table 2), close to 50% of the farmers benefited from the Kisaan Samman Nidhi Yojana and from the free electricity up to 200 units for agricultural use. However, of all those who benefited from these schemes, the vote share for the Congress and the BJP is equal. This suggests that there are, naturally, other factors at play in finally deciding the vote. This is supported by the voting pattern in the other two schemes: the Kisaan Fasal Beema Yojana and the Kamadhenu Pashu Beema Yojana. The latter becomes more relevant amid the political debate about cows, which continued during the campaigns, that hundreds of unclaimed animals are running loose around the Alwar district, causing problems for farmers. The percentage of farmers who have benefited from these two schemes is lower than the first two. Of all those who benefited from the latter two schemes, a higher proportion of them voted for Congress. This may suggest that the latter two schemes were found to be much more beneficial to the farmers than the former two. It must still be noted that the difference in the vote share between the Congress and the BJP is limited here too.
The Congress can take satisfaction from the fact that the agriculture-oriented schemes seem to have ensured that 41% of the farmers voted for it, as compared with the 38% who chose the BJP. This is starkly in contrast to the voting pattern among non-farmers, of which 43% voted for the BJP, compared with a significant advantage over the Congress’s 38%. This shows that the BJP continues to have a stronghold over their traditional non-agricultural vote bank, all the while increasing their support among the agricultural community (Table 3).
(Aadyot Prakash and Nirmanyu Chouhan are researchers at Lokniti-CSDS)
