REPEAL AND REPAIR

Withdrawing the farm laws alone will not douse the ire against the BJP

- PRATUL SHARMA

Eight years ago, when Amit Shah went to Uttar Pradesh as a BJP general secretary, he worked his magic to help the party win 71 out of 80 Lok Sabha seats in the state. In 2017, as BJP president, he guided it to 312 out of 403 assembly seats. In the coming assembly polls, the home minister has picked the toughest assignment for himself— western Uttar Pradesh and Braj.

The electoral performance in western Uttar Pradesh, dominated by farming communities—especially the Jats—was key to the party’s success in both 2014 and 2017. But, the farmers’ protest changed things. Farmers in western Uttar Pradesh, perhaps inspired by the strategy of their counterparts in Punjab, were not allowing party leaders to campaign in their villages.

In view of the resilience of the agitation, the BJP has made a strategic retreat by announcing that the three contentious farm laws would be repealed. Earlier, too, the Modi government has shown that it weighs in the political cost of its policy decisions.

For instance, it went back on the land acquisition ordinance in 2015. It also made changes to the GST before the last assembly polls in Gujarat, to counter the anger among traders. With regard to the farm laws, BJP leaders said that “Hindu-Sikh unity” coming under threat weighed on Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s mind. “As the PM said, we tried to convince people, but we could not do so,” said Sardar R.P. Singh, BJP national spokesperson. “People were misled that their land would be taken by Adanis and Ambanis. We could not let [the situation in] Punjab go back to [the unrest in the] the 1980s and 1990s.”