By Ashok Gulati

With a triple win in Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh (MP), and Rajasthan, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is elated. It is more confident of winning the 2024 Parliamentary elections, and Prime Minister Narendra Modi has said that this will give a hat-trick in 2024. There is no doubt that the Modi-Shah jodi, even in the absence of a chief ministerial face, has paid off well. Brand Modi is soaring, politically as well as in the Sensex!

The BJP’s immediate challenge is choosing the right chief ministers, and simultaneously contain the potential rebels eyeing the CM’s post. Yet, it is worth looking at “Modi plus other factors” behind the BJP’s success. It may have significant lessons for 2024.

For this, let me turn to a few promises that the party made to the electorate in these state elections. Some of these promises are incentives, others may be pure welfare or revdis (doles).

In MP, where the BJP’s win is most astounding and decisive, it is being said that the promise of giving women 1,250/month, under the Ladli Behna scheme, has been a critical factor in swinging women votes towards the BJP. But, the Congress had promised an even higher sum (1500/month). Then why did the women votes not swing in favour of the Congress? It may be worth pondering whether the electorate trusts the BJP or the Congress.

I feel there is more to the story of the BJP’s win in Madhya Pradesh than Ladli Behna, and even the Modi-Shah factor. And that story is embedded in a remarkable success of Madhya Pradesh’s agriculture since Shivraj Singh Chouhan took over the reins of chief ministership in 2005. Since 2005-06 to 2022-23, Madhya Pradesh’s agri-GDP has registered an average annual growth rate of 7%, as against an all-India figure of 3.8%. As a result of this, Madhya Pradesh is the only state in the country where the share of agri-GDP in the overall state GDP has increased over the years, and stands at a whopping figure of 44% against the all India picture of just 18%.

It matters a great deal for a state to have this high growth and high share of agriculture because agriculture in Madhya Pradesh still engages more than 60% of workforce against an all-India figure of 45%. That means the growth in Madhya Pradesh over the Chouhan period has not only been spectacular but also very inclusive. No other state matches with this record, except Gujarat during the Modi period (2002-2013), when agriculture growth touched 9%. Such high growth rates in agriculture over reasonably long periods, pay off handsomely—politically as well as economically—as the maximum number of people benefit from such a growth model. And they surely reward the captain, the chief minister and their party, by bringing them back to power. So, this is a lesson for other states as well as for Indian policy makers at the Centre to make agriculture a top priority.

What could be the drivers of growth in Madhya Pradesh’s agriculture? Our research at ICRIER on MP’s agriculture growth tells us three factors are major drivers: one, almost doubling of irrigation, which helped raise cropping intensity as well as productivity; two, setting up a well organised procurement system for wheat, including the role of bonus on top of Union’s minimum support price (MSP); and three, diversification towards high value crops, especially horticulture, and dairy. Much of the agriculture policy matrix in Madhya Pradesh revolved around these areas. There was a special focus on completing dams and canal networks. Madhya Pradesh has a large untapped potential for public irrigation (large and medium irrigation) in the country. But the real magic was through groundwater irrigation. The state government supplied ample power to agriculture, increasing it from 6,810 Gwh in 2010-11 to 26,521 Gwh in 2021-22. The share of agriculture in the overall power consumption of the state went up from 27% to 40% over the same period. Groundwater irrigation spread from 3.7 million hectares in 2005-06 to 8.3 million hectares by 2019-20. This was revolutionary.

As irrigation increased, so did production of most crops. Most notably wheat, for which the MP government developed an organised system to procure—perhaps the best in the country. From literally nowhere, today, MP is only next to Punjab in procurement of wheat, and in many years, it has been a neck-and-neck competition with Punjab. But, unlike Punjab, it also attracts several large private sector players to buy the best wheat (sharbati) from the state as it has kept its commissions and mandi charges the lowest in the country and encourages even direct buying from farmers. And remember, all this does not come in a day. It is the hard work—call it tapasya—of Shivraj and his team, over the years.

One may still ask why the BJP lost in 2018. One factor perhaps was the withdrawal of bonus on wheat and paddy. When the BJP came to power in the Centre in 2014, it advised MP and Chhattisgarh, then BJP-ruled states, to withdraw these bonuses. Both states followed the advice, and both lost in 2018. Now, in this election bout of 2023, the BJP brought back the promise of handsome bonus in MP, Chhattisgarh, as well as Rajasthan (about 27% on wheat and 42% on paddy’s current Union government MSP). May be that is another factor behind the BJP’s victory in these states, which is not being talked about. The lesson is prices do matter for farmers. Although state-level bonuses are distortionary, how justified is unloading central grain stocks way below the economic cost to tame food inflation? It may not go well with the farmers in the national election. So, beware, state victories may not necessarily guarantee a national victory. Don’t forget the “India shining” episode with the Vajpayee government.

The author is a distinguished professor at ICRIER

Views are personal