BJP banks on sops to woo voters

The BJP will be banking on agriculture and rural sops to see them through this Lok Sabha elections. Party insiders say a detailed note suggesting major changes in the current agricultural and rural development policies besides a slew of anti-recessionary measures have been sent to the central manifesto committee by the party’s state economic wing as the moot points on which the party’s Lok Sabha poll manifesto for the forthcoming election should be designed upon.

It is learnt that the poll pundits including economist Dr Bharat Gariwala and other experts who had prepared the note have suggested that the party should accord highest priority to agriculture sector which was not handled efficiently by the UPA government resulting into huge food imports and soaring prices of commodities in the last three years. “If returned to power, we will make total changes in the existing food security structure and create a buffer stock of 60 lakh tonnes as against a meagre 12 lakh tonnes kept by the Congress-led coalition at the Centre,” promised a party member.

And that is not all. Party experts have also proposed that if elected to power, the BJP will go for total over-haul of crop insurance scheme for farmers as the existing provisions are not providing the desired benefits to the farmers. In the proposed draft aimed at amending the current crop insurance policy, the farmers would be paid compensation on basis of the income they would have from the crop and not on the value of the crop they had sown.

In another major shift the party may implement the APMC act prepared on the recommendations made by the Shankerlal Guru committee. The Act states that the government should make concerted efforts to create best infra-structure facilities for farmers so that the agricultural produce could be air lifted for export straight from the APMC complex.

Sources have also hinted that the Gujarat cell has also urged the central leadership to make drastic changes in the existing RBI rules and regulations for granting credit and deposit to clients as part of its anti-recessionary measures.

While the experts have asked the party to direct the RBI to minimise the interest rates to deal effectively with recession, they have also suggested making massive efforts at the same time to generate more jobs to save people from the jaws of retrenchment, in the private sector that has been reeling under the ravages of the global economic crisis.

They have pleaded that the party should give special concessions to the diamond
industry having its main centres in Surat and other places in Gujarat, which had earned the government exchequer foreign exchange worth Rs20,000 crore.

The note also takes cognizance of the social sector which has played a crucial role in
enhancing the popularity of the UPA government. In a bid to throw Congress a tough challenge, the BJP is also learnt to be including a series of innovative schemes for this sector. One of the important suggestions made by the team of experts is that the party should sanction 6 per cent of GDP for education, health and social welfare, if it is returned to power. At present the Centre collects huge amount by levying 3 per cent cess on education and the spending for the core sector is not sufficient.

In addition to these programmes the BJP will also highlight national security and other deterrent measures including enforcement of Pota to check the threat posed by the terrorists from across the border in its manifesto.