Jaipur: From Jai Jawan (youth) to Jai Kisan

Four years back, a man from Gujarat with trimmed beard and graying hair had caught the youth’s fancy with blitzkrieg of a digital campaign. He laughed and he wept with fellow Indians before the front cameras of smart phones in a social media outreach that would become a public phenomenon engineering a change in the political discourse hinged around a riot-torn past. 

In February 2013, a year before the general elections, the suave Gujarati bhai appears before students of Delhi’s Sri Ram College of Commerce for a conversation which is now widely regarded as his public bid for the nation’s highest executive office. The choice of place was not born of chance. It was the year of the jawan (the youth). They were spilling out on streets of the capital to get heard. He had witnessed them rattle the comatose UPA government for justice to Nirbhaya. In a year, 15 crore first-time voters would be faced with a choice in the biggest democratic spectacle. He saw it coming by a mile. In the summer of 2014, the youth and aspirational middle class had spoken. Enter Narendra Modi, the Prime Minister of India. 

Less than a year from now, Modi shall be returning to the arena to face the crowds again. On Monday, at a packed Amrudon ka Bagh in Jaipur, Modi’s first words after duly eulogizing Bharat Mata, were: Jai Kisaan. He went to great pains to elaborate how his first choice of public meeting after the Centre’s decision to revise the Minimum Support Prices (MSP) for farmers is Rajasthan, a state which is the barometer of the voter’s mood and one hop away from the general elections.  

The admirable quality about BJP election juggernaut is that the party under stewardship of Modi and Amit Shah is quick to adapt. The PM is now Pradhan Sewak. The selfies have thinned out and the selfless work for people is in. He is talking about Ujjwala, the flagship programme that promotes LPG cooking as a healthy gift to mothers. He is offering to purchase farmers’ harvest at double the MSP. In a video interaction with nation’s farmers he is promising to double their revenues by 2022. 

The change of course was waiting to happen. The pro-agriculture budget this year ushered it in. Bruised by the irrefutable impact of the Goods and Services Tax (GST) on trade and the teething troubles that continue to irk party’s traditional voter, the BJP is no longer brandishing reforms as its cornerstone of good governance. The demonetization decision has seen better days. RBI data for fiscal ending March 2018 reveals that currency circulation has reached pre-note ban levels. Even for the shrewd Union minister Arun Jaitley who claimed India is headed towards a less-cash economy after note-ban the apple has fallen too far from the tree. Fumbling cash-backed businesses and job losses in its wake has made the government shy of currency ban. 

The public meeting in Jaipur on Saturday is a sign of things to come. More than two lakh beneficiaries of Centre and state government schemes were shepherded to the venue to be told that their Pradhan Sewak is at their service. The prime minister’s decision to address the farmers is not out of turn. Most BJP governments including the ones in Maharashtra and poll-bound Rajasthan and MP are already offering to pay back farmers’ loans and waive off their pain. So, when PM Modi says Jai Kisaan it is not just an introduction to the political narrative. It is the story.