NEW DELHI / BHOMADA: Narendra Modi swept India’s 2014 general election with the slogan “Achhe din (good days) are coming”
Four years later, as Prime Minister Modi mobilises to win re-election in May, he and his Bharatiya
Janata Party (BJP) are being buffeted for a lack of jobs, falling farm prices and rural wages, a tax reform that led to unemployment and a demonetisation exercise that sapped liquidity.
Despite high economic growth, the fall of the rupee currency to record lows this year has led to a surge in prices of largely imported fuel, which is feeding into inflation. Nationwide protests have broken out because of the price rise.
“There’s no improvement in our life — we eat two basic meals a day but struggle to save for soap and detergent,” Misri Lal, 52, said in Bhomada village in central India’s Madhya Pradesh state, where he earns $2 a day watching over a yellowish-green soybean farm.
In a series of interviews in India’s political heartland, the northern and central plains, many people said they had been disappointed by Modi’s government.
But in a nation of 1.3 billion people, it was difficult to estimate how far the disillusionment had spread and how much it could affect Modi and the BJP at the next general election.
Despite its fitful performance on the economy, the BJP remains robustly nationalist, which plays well among many voters. Modi’s aides insist that the party will not suffer in the election next year and will repeat the 2014 performance.
They also say the BJP will do well in three big state elections due later in 2018, which could signal how things will go in the general election.
Opinion polls predict Modi will return to power next year, but said the gap against the opposition was narrowing.
But “achhe din”, which has become synonymous with Modi and his rule, is being mocked on social media in India. Some BJP officials privately say they are not quite sure of sentiment in the small towns and villages of rural India, where two-thirds of the people live.
Lal, the farm hand, said he was a long-time BJP supporter but it was time for change.
“We have always voted for them but people are angry now. It appears things will change this time around,” Lal said, his wife and two grandchildren looking on from near their tin shed in the middle of the unfenced soybean fields.
The Modi administration has acknowledged that farmers are suffering in a country where agriculture is the biggest employer, engaging 263 million people or 55 per cent of the total number of workers.
“Trends in inflation clearly show that farmers are under distress due to un-remunerative prices and need to be compensated appropriately,” India’s farm ministry said in a report sent to states last month.
Rural wages have weakened across India compared to a high growth period during the rule of the centre-left Congress party which aggressively promoted a rural jobs scheme that guaranteed every citizen paid work for at least 100 days in a year.
Economists say its impact has now levelled out.
A boom in the construction sector had sustained the growth in wages but that has since slowed down dramatically, dragged by Modi’s November 2016 move to suck high value currency notes out of the system to combat corruption and then a sweeping goods and services tax (GST) that businesses are struggling to adapt to.
— Reuters
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