Vidarbha and Marathwada: Battleground for electoral gains amid drought crisis

Over a decade later, the political apathy continues. As several constituencies in the two regions are set to vote for the Lok Sabha elections on Friday (April 26), the growing climate crisis and its impacts on the people in these regions are nearly missing from agendas, speeches and campaigns of major political parties and candidates. On the other hand, political parties and candidates are milking it for electoral gains and to target their opponents.

Drought, water scarcity and farmers' suicides

Irregular and uneven rainfall and the resulting water scarcity have led to 23 districts in the state reeling under the shocks of drought-like conditions. Due to their climate vulnerability, the Vidarbha and Marathwada regions are the worst hit by this crisis. As of April 2024, as per news sources, only 33% of the total available water stock remains in the state across dams, reservoirs and other water projects even as the crucial summer months are yet to pass.

Government data suggests that at the moment, 2,706 tankers are providing water across 2,143 villages and 5,239 hamlets in the state. Of these, nearly 52% are in Marathwada. Drought-like conditions are impacting the livelihoods of a large number of people who are dependent on agriculture in these regions. In 2023, a total of 2,851 farmers committed suicide in the state of which 2,527 were from Vidarbha and Marathwada, underlining the severity of the crisis in these regions marred by constant cycles of crop losses and debts.

The politics and electoral arithmetic

The two regions comprise 18 Lok Sabha constituencies. While voting for five concluded last week, the remaining constituencies (five in Vidarbha and eight in Marathwada) will vote for in the next three phases going up to May 13.

Over the last few weeks, the two regions saw a large number of national and state leaders woo voters as part of the electoral campaigns. From Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Congress leader Rahul Gandhi to prominent leaders such as Eknath Shinde, Devendra Fadnavis, Sharad Pawar, Ajit Pawar and Uddhav Thackeray, many held meetings in the region, which saw a significant footfall of voters and supporters. But for lakhs of farmers who are hit by the crisis, however, this seems like just another season of tall promises sans action.

"On the one hand, farmers like me are struggling to such an extent that we are worried about sustenance itself as this time the yield is very poor and we are unable to get minimum prices even for the little that we manage to grow despite bad climatic conditions. In the middle of all this, leaders are busy in internal fights and blame games. They all promise to end our plight but we have seen this repeat every election season," said a marginal farmer, who asked not to be named, from Sultanpur village in Amravati district.

The Amravati district has recorded the highest number of farmer suicides in the state over the last three years (660 in 2021, 725 in 2022 and 318 in 2023 according to data compiled by the state relief and rehabilitation department).

In the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, the BJP-Shiv Sena combine managed to gain power in eight of the 10 seats in Vidarbha and seven of the eight seats in Marathwada.

This year, however, in the backdrop of the political crisis in the state - especially with the split in Shiv Sena and NCP and the resultant formation of several new alliances - the two regions are seeing the BJP-led Mahayuti and the opposition-led INDIA bloc fighting tooth and nail for these seats.

Patronage politics

For the voters who are already reeling under several existential pressures, rapid political changes in the state and the split in the local cadre across these parties have made things worse. In this context, patronage politics, a term used to denote the use of state resources to reward individuals for their electoral support, is only on the rise.

A farmer's testimony from Asardhav, a village in Beed that falls under the ambit of PoCRA (a flagship government initiative for drought and climate resilient agriculture) is testimony to this.

"Right from allocating tankers to approving wells and borewells, everything is controlled by politicians and their network of fixers. With elections round the corner, local leaders only provide support if you stand behind them in the polls. These arrangements are not new but now with the local cadre split into so many groups, we are unable to decide who to stand with. This adversely affects the resources at our disposal," he added.

It is ironic that despite the power that voters yield in a democracy like India, the majority of voters in the two regions are facing helplessness and ignorance as most leaders have resorted to mudslinging or credit-hogging ahead of elections. On Wednesday, BJP leader Amit Shah blamed Sharad Pawar alleging that he did nothing when he was an agriculture minister in the country and blamed him for the high number of farmer suicides in Vidarbha. At an election rally in Wardha on April 19, Modi targeted the Congress for being "anti-development and anti-farmer."

A day after, chief minister Shinde used his entire address in a rally held in Nanded to praise the leadership of Modi, invoke the issue of Ram Mandir and claim credit for the state's decision to grant reservation to Marathas under his leadership, with issues of agriculture and farmers not mentioned.

A history of neglect and indifference

For many decades now, Vidarbha and Marathwada have been political battlegrounds, driven by the politics of backwardness shaped by long-standing agrarian distress and intricate caste equations. This backdrop has fostered a pattern of neglect, where the promise of development and upliftment remains unfulfilled, despite shifts in political power and numerous schemes launched at both state and central levels.

The prevalent regional imbalance, reflected in stark differences in developmental indicators, underlines the deep-seated challenges facing locals here, with the plight of farmers continuing to worsen amidst entrenched political apathy and a political economy of drought that often benefits influential figures at the expense of vulnerable populations.

Moreover, widespread corruption in the implementation of relief and support schemes has further compounded the suffering of those most affected by the climate crisis and agrarian distress. As the average farmer in Maharashtra struggles to make ends meet, it takes only a few right political moves for leaders to absolve themselves in cases of misappropriation and wrongdoings - opposition leaders point out the clean chit given to Ajit Pawar in the irrigation scam soon after joining hands with the BJP as a case in point.

This underlines that irrespective of political equations, the most prominent constituent in the state- the farmer is a mute spectator, an irony for a state that claims to be scaling new highs on several development indicators!

Dr. Sanjay Patil is a Mumbai-based researcher who works on Maharashtra Politics and Urban Informality. His doctoral work looks at the journey of Shiv Sena between 1985 and 2022.