PM Modi does not care about farmers, only their votes: Yogendra Yadav

Yogendra Yadav, president of Swaraj India and eminent farmer leader, is of the opinion that Prime Minister Narendra Modi is engaging with farmers more since elections are approaching. In an interview with Mint, he said the last-minute promises will not get him the results he is expecting.

Yadav said it is clear that Modi does not care about farmers, but only their votes. He added that the Gujarat elections and defeat in recent bypolls have shaken the party and they are getting desperate.

“He is not politically naive, he can sense that he could be looking at defeat or at least a substantial setback, enough to put him and the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) in minority in the upcoming elections,” Yadav said.

The leader, who was formerly with the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), believes that a government’s actions in the last year do not affect election results, and that people judge a party on its actual delivery. Talking about minimum support price (MSP) hike by the Centre, he said it will be difficult to achieve it overnight since there is no existing mechanism for delivering it to farmers currently.

He said PM Modi has his work cut out for him since it is a tough task to bring farmers together in one block.

Talking about the upcoming state elections, Yadav does not see anything dramatically different happening. "The BJP has a very serious challenge for themselves in Madhya Pradesh since resentment and unhappiness are settling in", according to Yadav’s own excursions through the state.

“After Mandsaur firing and related events, Shivraj Singh Chouhan’s only respite is that he has benefited from a completely incompetent opposition, which is inert and reactive,” Yadav said, adding that nothing will be in favour of BJP in Rajasthan and Chattisgarh, too, is tough terrain.