Here's what Modi govt can do to avoid rural Gujarat-like drubbing in 2019

A big takeaway of the 2017 Gujarat state polls has been BJP's inability to hold on its rural seats in some parts of the state, though this hasn't been a uniform trend everywhere, general perception and ground reports do indicate that rural voters haven't been particularly kind to the party.

However, critics of this theory argue that if that was the case then BJP would have lost all the rural seats in the state, which also points to the fact that a particular community of farmers might have felt aggrieved with the party.

Nonetheless, agriculture in Gujarat hasn't been doing particularly well, mainly in the last few years.

Data sourced from the NITI Aayog website shows that in 2014-15 and 2015-16, the Gross State Value Added of agriculture, forestry and fishing dipped to a negative 0.48 per cent and 1.28 per cent, respectively.

This fall, though against the backdrop of over 26 per cent growth in 2013-14 and also two back-to-back droughts, indicated that the state's superlative performance in agriculture was showing signs of wearing off.

On top of that, the sharp fall in prices of main commercial crops in just concluded kharif harvest season and even before that aggravated the distress.

The prices of major commercial crops, particularly groundnut and cotton, have dropped below their state-fixed minimum support price (MSP) – the average mandi price of groundnut seed this month was around Rs 3,800 a quintal, as against the MSP of Rs 4,450, while cottonseed prices were also below the MSP of long staple cotton Rs 4,320 per quintal and also that of MSP of medium staple cotton Rs 4,020.
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