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Despite being primarily an agricultural economy, Andhra Pradesh, unlike Punjab, has never made the issue of farmers the poll plank. Neither the ruling nor the opposition parties have focused on agrarian issues here for decades.
While the Punjab farmers’ agitation against new farm laws proposed by the Union government dictated the election results in the State putting Aam Aadmi Party on the throne, no such potent force of farmers is visible in Andhra Pradesh.
The main reason for this is that a majority of farmers in the State are tenant farmers, and the actual landowners have little impact of the agrarian crisis on them as their income from leasing out the lands remains unaffected by any crisis.
80s’ ryot agitation
Back in the 1980s, farmers, under the aegis of the Left parties, launched a massive agitation called the ‘Akhilapaksha Rythu Udyamam’ (all-party farmer agitation), demanding a solution to the agrarian crisis that prevailed in the State.
The farmers’ agitation caused tremors in the State, and it was during this period that the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) was formed.
TDP founder-president N.T. Rama Rao entered the political fray, attracting people from all walks of life. In 1986, NTR even announced a three-tier plan in an obvious bid to firm up the party’s base and woo 74 lakh farmers.
In subsequent years, there was a paradigm shift on the agriculture front following economic reforms. Farmers’ suicides began hitting the headlines during the 90s. More than 2,000 farmers committed suicide between 1996-2000, majority of them being tenant farmers.
The Congress championed the farmers’ cause and issues like the steep power tariff hike. In an election that followed a series of farmers’ agitations, the Congress came to power in 2004 under Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy’s leadership in combined A.P.
The liberalisation and economic reforms-induced crisis in the agriculture sector had ripple effects in politics, leading to the fall of the TDP government in 2004.
Political polarisation
Post-2004, even though the agrarian issues continued to prevail and the farmer suicides did not entirely stop, the problems of the ryots have not been made the political agenda since. The reason for this can be attributed to the polarisation of the farmers’ voice which lead to the weakening of their voice.
Among the many reasons for this polarisation are five factors that take prominance.
First, the landowners who never laid their hands on a plough to till the field continue to enjoy farmer benefits such as interest-free loans and agricultural subsidies doled out by successive governments.
Secondly, most of the farmers belong to the small and marginal category and have little influence in politics.
Thirdly, most of the landowners are associated with some political party or the other and show little interest in taking up the issues during the elections.
Fourthly, the farmers participate in State elections with region and locality-specific farm interests.
Lastly, the Congress government in the combined Andhra Pradesh constructed irrigation canals, which are the main source of water for farmers. Since then, local irrigation politics has become more polarised.
‘Voice weakened’
“In comparison to big farmers and landowners, the small and marginal farmers, tenant farmers have no voice or their voices go unheard,” opined CPI(M) State secretary V. Srinivasa Rao. It was a prime reason that the agrarian crisis has never topped the agenda of the political parties.
In 2014, the TDP promised a farm loan waiver, but there was no comprehensive plan to address the agrarian issues. The YSRCP, which came to power in 2019, followed a similar path. The YSRCP promised the Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) scheme instead of taking a holistic approach towards helping the agriculture sector wriggle out of the crisis.
