BackThe importance of good harvests in state elections
Sharp agriculture growth is a necessary factor to beat anti-incumbency
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The modest price hike in minimum support prices of some crops this week has been lauded as good economics. But the question that will be haunting the government is whether it has done enough to alleviate the distress in rural areas, especially when the Bihar polls later this year are seen as a litmus test for the rule of the National Democratic Alliance.
The share of agriculture in the country’s economic output has halved over the past 25 years to around 14%, but it’s the dominant occupation in rural areas. Thus, growth in farm output remains crucial to the electoral fortunes of political parties. Data shows ensuring farm growth at a sharp pace is a necessary factor for state governments that want to be re-elected.
The government’s chief economic adviser Arvind Subramanian said as much when he cited the finance minister at the convocation of the National Institute of Bank Management in April.
“He (Arun Jaitley) said that the only chief ministers who have been re-elected three times have been those who delivered more than 8% agricultural growth," Subramanian said.
Others have picked up this hypothesis as well. Writing in India Today, Shekhar Gupta dubbed it his “Doctrine of Agro-Political Incumbency".
Mint looked at the annual average growth rate of agricultural gross state domestic product at constant prices for states which have elected the same party for more than two terms.
While, the 8% growth figure mentioned by Subramanian is not universally true in constant prices terms, a clear relation between high rates of agriculture growth and the ability to beat anti-incumbency does emerge.
While this analysis wasn’t done for all consecutively re-elected state governments in independent India, it is worth pointing out that this relationship holds for the Left Front government in West Bengal as well. The Left Front ruled West Bengal from 1977 to 2011. Agriculture grew at 3.63% in constant price terms between 1980-81 and 2010-11 in the state, compared with 2.27% in the preceding decade. Indeed it was rapid discontent among farmers due to forcible land acquisition that led to the Left Front’s downfall in the state.
The importance of agriculture in elections in the Indian context is perhaps a no-brainer. Seven out of 10 Indian workers work in rural areas. About 65% of rural workers are engaged in farm employment, which means that half the country’s workforce is employed in agriculture.
This year, the farm sector has become all the more important for elections because of a slowdown in agricultural growth and increasing rural distress. No one should know better the relationship between agriculture and electoral fortunes better than the Bharatiya Janata Party which runs three out of six state governments in their third or fourth terms.
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