After attracting thousands of farmers from Punjab and Uttar Pradesh to join a year-long agitation, farm union leaders were largely unable to leverage that mass support to tilt the results in the Assembly polls.
In Punjab, the union leaders who fought the elections are set to lose their deposits. In U.P., where the wider Samyukt Kisan Morcha (SKM) platform campaigned against the BJP and called for its ouster, leaders claimed that farmers across the state voted along caste and communal lines.
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“It is a failure of democracy. We tried to consolidate all farmers on the basis of the problems they face as a community. Instead, they are voting for those who share their caste or religion. Farmers have failed to vote for their own welfare,” said Yudhvir Singh, general secretary of the Bharatiya Kisan Union (Tikait), a major SKM player whose supporters camped at the Ghazipur protest site on Delhi’s eastern border for a year during the protests over the three agricultural laws, since repealed by the Centre.
The sugarcane belt of western U.P. from where BKU (Tikait) draws most of its support base did show a limited impact of the farm movement. According to estimates from The Hindu Data Team, the alliance led by the Samajwadi Party garnered a 42% vote share in this region, equal to the BJP, and 16 percentage points higher than in the last polls in 2017. In the key sugar belt constituencies of Shamli and Kairana, for instance, SP and RLD candidates were leading as the vote counting process drew to a close on Thursday evening.
However, the Centre’s decision to repeal those laws in the run up to elections, as well as the U.P. government’s success in reducing the payment of arrears to cane farmers, took some of the wind out of the sails of the farm movement when it came to electoral gains. In Muzaffarnagar — where Rakesh Tikait and other SKM leaders held a mass rally calling for the ouster of the BJP government with war cries of Hindu-Muslim unity last September — the BJP’s candidate held a solid lead.
In other parts of the State, the appeal for a farmer vote bank failed to gain traction. Apart from sugar, U.P. also leads the country in potato production. However, the potato growing region of the State, spread between Agra and Kanpur, clearly went with the BJP, which won a 46% vote share there in contrast to the 35% won by the SP alliance, according to The Hindu Data Team’s estimates. Across the State, the SP alliance garnered a 36% vote share in rural areas, trailing the 43% who voted for the BJP.
“A good number of farmers did vote against the BJP , but non-farmers did not respond to our campaign even in rural areas. The BJP has succeeded in bringing its anti-Muslim Gujarat model psychology among voters, and that proved to be a stronger motivation than the anti-farmer policies of this government,” said Hannan Mollah, general secretary of the Left-affiliated All India Kisan Sabha.
With regard to Punjab, he blamed union leaders who had chosen to contest the election. Senior leader Balbir Singh Rajewal managed to win less than 4% of the votes in his Samrala constituency. “We repeatedly warned that contesting elections would create a bad name for the farm movement,” said Mr. Mollah, noting that the SKM had expelled from its leadership Mr. Rajewal and Gurnam Singh Chaduni, who also formed a political party.
“The agitation gained widespread support because it was seen as apolitical, above politics. Especially with the repeal achieved, farmers voted according to their own affiliations, not for the union leaders who turned to politics,” said Ramandeep Singh Mann, a Punjab farmer and activist.
