Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the BJP have been urging citizens of the country to contribute with their suggestions and inputs to prepare the party’s Sankalp Patra (manifesto) for the 2024 Lok Sabha polls. The PM has been talking about the importance of public participation in the political process to strengthen a sense of collaboration between the government and the people on various platforms.
With PM Modi talking about the “four castes” in the country, i.e., the women, the farmers, the youth, and the poor, the Bharatiya Janata Party’s kisan morcha will be starting a nationwide farmer outreach campaign with a month-long Gram Parikrama Yatra to cover 2 lakh villages starting from Uttar Pradesh’s Muzaffarnagar on February 12 to collect suggestions and inputs. BJP national president JP Nadda will flag off this Parikrama Yatra.
BJP kisan morcha chief Raj Kumar Chahar said, “As PM Modi invited all the citizens of the country to provide their suggestions for the party’s Sankalp Patra for the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, the kisan morcha through this yatra will take suggestions of farmers during this door-to-door journey that will last a month. The kisan morcha subsequently will give the suggestions to BJP national president JP Nadda.”
India’s rural economy is still largely dependent on farming and related activities, and the agriculture sector accounts for nearly 50 per cent of the workforce. “Farmers also constitute an important voting bloc for the party, and therefore it is important for us to take their suggestions into consideration and prepare the manifesto accordingly, as we have done such exercises in the past as well,” said a senior BJP leader.
Observers say that while farmers may not have much power individually, they have been a force to contend with in Indian politics. Most notably, in the 1980s, farmers protesting low-crop prices and demanding free electricity supply brought New Delhi to a standstill. At that time, farmer groups with diverse political ideologies from various parts of the country quickly unified behind their common demands.
Most recently, three farm laws proposed by the Centre sparked unprecedented protests by farmers for over a year and forced the Modi government to withdraw the bills towards the end of 2021.
As part of the Gram Parikrama Yatra, the BJP during this one month will also be highlighting pro-farmer measures taken by the Modi government since 2014.
Prime Minister Modi earlier also invited the youths of the nation to contribute to the Bharatiya Janata Party’s manifesto for the upcoming Lok Sabha polls on the NaMo app.
Similar programmes for taking suggestions from different sections of society will be organised by the BJP at various levels in the coming weeks in the run-up to the general elections.
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