Modi’s popularity soars, why he needs to listen to voices that want to be heard, north to east to south

These illustrate a prime minister at the peak of his power both at home and abroad. Yet, voices from different parts of India — from the north to the east to the south — are trying to make themselves heard.

At the moment, farmers from Punjab are trying to seek a better deal for themselves with their “Dilli Chalo” cry, demanding, among other things, a legal guarantee for minimum support price (MSP) for their crops. Legally guaranteed MSP is just one of the demands in their 10-point charter.

No one knows the import of optics in politics better than the PM. And yet the protesters were met with barricades, concrete slabs covered with barbed wires, and drones dropping tear gas as the BJP-led Haryana government stopped them at the Punjab border, refusing to let them through. A team of three Union Ministers, including Agriculture Minister Arjun Munda, have been engaging in dialogue with the farm unions; even after a long session on Thursday night, tear gas was used Friday morning.

One argument the farmers are making is that they need a better deal. The 2018-’19 government figures put the average income of a farmer from agriculture at Rs 27 a day. The situation, therefore, calls for urgent reforms and a safety net for the farmers. A legally guaranteed MSP is fraught but the government needs to come up with viable options as farmers in Punjab are increasingly losing their pride in being a kisan even as their relatives in the UK, USA, or even Gurgaon do much better financially.

Perils of a geographic divide

The east is also sending a message, with continuing run-ins between the state administration and the BJP in West Bengal. The violence in Sandeshkhali is the latest example and requires not only an independent inquiry into the ongoing violence but also underlines the need for the Centre and the state to sit across the table and find a way out. In the northeast, Manipur continues to be a reminder of what might have been had an early intervention taken place.

From the south, there have been recent calls for “financial justice”. Last week, the CMs of Karnataka and Kerala came to Delhi for a “Chalo Delhi” campaign of their own, accompanied by their ministerial colleagues and MLAs, and protested against “financial excesses” by the Centre. While Karnataka CM Siddaramaiah and his team held a dharna at the Jantar Mantar on February 7, Kerala CM Pinarayi Vijayan followed suit the next day. Tamil Nadu CM M K Stalin lent support to Vijayan.

The protest by Karnataka came days after Congress MP D K Suresh, the brother of Deputy CM D K Shivakumar, triggered a row by saying that the southern states would be compelled to demand a “separate nation for south India” if injustices against the region were not rectified. This provided the BJP with another opportunity to target the Congress, with PM Modi leading a swift counter-attack and taking the Opposition party to task for bringing up the “north-south” divide.

Siddaramaiah tried to do damage control by giving the controversy a “Centre versus state” slant with his cry for a “tax movement” and generating a “sons of the soil” sentiment in Karnataka. But it was also an attempt to bring together the southern states on a common platform around the theme of the Centre’s “step-motherly” treatment on the issue of devolution of taxes.

This is an issue that is gaining traction in the south and could become a ticking time bomb unless it is deftly dealt with. More than this, the delimitation exercise scheduled for 2026 could become another point of friction between the south and the Centre. With the rise of population share in the Hindi heartland states, and decline in the south, the southern states feel they will be penalised for what should have been lauded as their achievement. The Tamil Nadu Assembly on Wednesday passed a resolution opposing delimitation.

With a political divide coinciding with the geographic divide, this could become problematic as the Congress and regional parties are in power in the southern states and the BJP is in the saddle in the Hindi heartland. The BJP in that case may not have the instrumentalities to navigate the southern terrain when problems arise. Thus, the PM’s southern outreach in the lead-up to the Ram Temple consecration — he visited major temples in the region with links to the Hindu deity — was a welcome step. For the same reason of stopping a political divide from turning into a geographic one, it is just as important for the Congress to revive in Uttar Pradesh and retain its hold in north India.

But then again, the BJP may decide it can ignore these voices from afar. The party can calculate that it can be home and dry with more than 300 Lok Sabha seats after sweeping the Hindi heartland on the strength of the Ram Temple issue and given that Gujarat is likely to stay by its side and Maharashtra is now on its radar.

In the past, those who have ignored these signs have rued their decision. Given Modi’s pan-India popularity and that he is on the cusp of a likely third term, he has the space to ensure that an already polarised polity doesn’t open new fault lines along geographic lines. That too when leaders who can step across the aisle and talk to the other side, or just be ready to listen, are few and far between nowadays.

(Neerja Chowdhury, Contributing Editor, The Indian Express, has covered the last 10 Lok Sabha elections. She is the author of How Prime Ministers Decide)