Lakhimpur violence: Echoes of Mandsaur June 2017

Could Lakhimpur violence become a rallying point against the BJP just as the Mandsaur killings did in 2017-18

On June 6, 2017, police opened fire on protesting farmers in Mandsaur, Madhya Pradesh, killing six farmers. The incident triggered nationwide protests lasting over a year and a half. Farm distress - issues of negligible increase in minimum support price, collapsing farm prices and poor procurement - found articulation in the protests.

The protests significantly contributed to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) losing its governments in Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan in the Assembly polls of December 2018. Of the 424 rural seats in these three states, the BJP could win only 153 in 2018, a sharp drop from the 294 it bagged in the 2013 edition of the Assembly polls.

Thousands of farmers marched to Parliament in November 2018. Images of 40,000 marginal farmers on a 180-km Mumbai to Nashik "Kisan long march", many barefoot, on February 21-21, 2019, caught the country's imagination.

Farm distress was expected to remain the predominant political narrative in the months leading up to the 2019 Lok Sabha polls. But the Modi government moved swiftly.

In the Union Budget that year, a nervous Narendra Modi government hiked the agriculture ministry's allocation by 78 per cent. It also proposed PM Kisan Samman Nidhi, with the objective to annually provide Rs 6,000 each to 12.6 crore small and marginal farmers.

Also Read | Lakhimpur Kheri incident and BJP's election prospects

While the government proposal assuaged farmers, the national mood changed with the Pulwama terror incident in mid-February and the Balakot airstrikes on February 26. The BJP comfortably won a handsome majority in the Lok Sabha polls, with overwhelming dominance in the states that had seen the most strident farm protests.

According to a Lokniti-CSDS post-poll survey, 68 per cent farmers in the country said they were satisfied with the performance of the Modi government. The survey findings suggested the Centre's PM Kisan scheme helped dissipate farmers' anger, many of whom received its Rs 2000 first instalment in their bank accounts before the polling day.

The survey also found that 42 per cent of farmers who had heard of India's airstrikes in Balakot voted for the BJP, and only 17 per cent voted for the Congress party. Interestingly, of those who had not heard of the airstrikes, 31 per cent voted for the BJP while 28 per cent for the Congress. The story of the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, if not for the BJP heeding the warning bells of Mandsaur and the Assembly poll results, could have been different.

Therefore, the recent past has lessons both for the BJP and the opposition. If Mandsaur 2017 triggered farm protests, the Lakhimpur Kheri incident, where eight including four farmers were killed in violence during a protest on Sunday, could further consolidate the ongoing farm protests.

It could mar Yogi Adityanath's plans to retain power by winning the Assembly polls four months away.

Adityanath, fighting a battle of his own within his party, has been quick to ensure a compromise is struck with the farmers. The state government has committed Rs 50 lakh compensation to families of the victims, promised government jobs to one family member of those killed, ordered a probe, and asked the police to book Union minister Ajay Mishra's son Ashish.

On September 26, the Adityanath government hiked sugarcane purchase price by Rs 25 per quintal. However, his government's record is quite abysmal as this was the first such increase in four years. The state government will need to do much more to mollify irate farmers of western UP.

The BJP governments in Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan couldn't respond suitably to the Mandsaur incident of 2017. Its chief ministers - Raman Singh, Shivraj Singh Chouhan and Vasundhara Raje - lost their respective governments. However, Chouhan returned through some backdoor manoeuvring a year and a half later.

We shall soon know if the Modi government at the Centre will move as swiftly as it did in the run-up to the 2019 Lok Sabha polls to prevent the Lakhimpur Kheri incident from becoming a rallying cry for the farmers and just as the Mandsaur incident did in 2017-18.

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