Indian election demonstrates rage over failed agricultural policies

April 28 (EIRNS) - With the vote in from more than 70 percent of state assembly polls in India's most populous state, Uttar Pradesh, the verdict against the Manmohan Singh government in New Delhi is loud and clear: the Congress Party-led coalition government at the center has betrayed the majority of the people in India. As a result, the once most-powerful Congress Party is not expected to secure more than 30 seats out of the 400-plus seats it contested.

The election mandate elsewhere has been equally clear over the last five years: all those who have implemented neo-liberal economic policies, whether the earlier National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government at the Center, or the present Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government, or governments in the states like Madhya Pradesh, have been rejected by the people.

In India, tariff liberalization, even in advance of WTO commitments, has translated into a profound crisis in the countryside. Indian economist Utsa Patnaik has described the calamity as "a collapse in rural livelihoods and incomes" owing to the steep fall in the prices of farm products. Along with this has come a rapid decline in consumption of food grains, with the average Indian family of four consuming 76 kg less in 2003 compared to 1998 and 88 kg less than a decade earlier, Foreign Policy in Focus pointed out in a recent article. The state of Andhra Pradesh, which has become a byword for agrarian distress owing to trade liberalization, saw a catastrophic rise in farmers' suicides from 233 in 1998 to over 2,600 in 2002. One estimate is that some 100,000 farmers in India have taken their lives owing to collapsing prices stemming from rising imports.