Mumbai: When 38-year-old Sharad Pawar took oath as Maharashtra’s youngest chief minister in 1978, Devendra Fadnavis was still in school.

Fadnavis—now 46 and the state’s youngest chief minister since Pawar—is working assiduously to demolish the political foundations of an empire that Pawar built on sugar, credit societies, vegetable markets and irrigation. The government’s determination has alarmed Pawar’s Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) as it stares at the possible collapse of a power base that sustained it whether the party was in power or out of it.

Target No. 1—the state’s cooperative societies, which largely owe allegiance to the NCP.

In January, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led government amended the Maharashtra Cooperative Societies Act to appoint independent experts to the boards of all cooperative bodies in the state, including cooperative banks and cooperative sugar factories, angering NCP which dominates these boards.

Of Maharashtra’s 306 Agriculture Produce Market Committees (APMCs), experts have been appointed to around 100, according to Maharashtra’s public works department minister Chandrakant Patil who till recently held the cooperation portfolio and oversaw enactment of these provisions. Patil said the process to select candidates for appointment to cooperatives has been started.

“It is taking time because the criteria we have fixed requires the candidates to fulfil several conditions. But they will be appointed soon," Patil said.

Two credit cooperative societies that Shashikant Shinde, an NCP legislator from Koregaon founded, will be affected, and not surprisingly, he called it the BJP’s “backdoor entry" into cooperatives.

“This provision has been incorporated in the Act only to ensure BJP members or sympathizers make it to the board of directors of a cooperative. Since the BJP has not been able to enter the cooperative sector through democratic means like us, it is trying to make a backdoor entry," alleged Shinde, who is also a labour leader in the state’s wholesale fruit and vegetable markets.

Target No. 2—cooperative banks, again dominated by the NCP and its former ally, the Congress.

The Fadnavis government issued an ordinance in January 2016, barring all directors on boards of cooperative banks which have seen financial irregularities and administrative mismanagement from contesting elections for two terms. In effect, NCP and Congress leaders who have dominated these boards will be kept away for a total of 10 years, simultaneously opening up space for the BJP to make a push.

The government seems to be on solid ground though. It has pointed to frequent guidelines from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to back its claim that the decision to bar directors of mismanaged cooperatives was not a political one.

Patil, who held the cooperation portfolio when this amendment was carried out, said RBI has wanted Maharashtra government to carry out this reform since 2008. “It is already late," he said.

He may be right, but the NCP panicked. Pawar himself told Fadnavis at an event in January not to “destroy" the cooperative sector in the name of “harsh decisions and reforms".

According to Nashik-based farm activist Giridhar Patil, the two decisions in the cooperative sector were “a clear sign that the BJP was trying to diminish NCP’s clout and create space for itself".

Target No. 3—the state’s wholesale agriculture markets. Again, dominated by NCP.

In July, the government started the process of destabilising the monopoly of traders over farmers in the state.

The state’s archaic APMC Act mandates farmers to their produce to APMC yards sell it only to licensed traders. Over the years, a cartel of traders evolved, to the detriment of farmers.

Fadnavis’s July ordinance deregulated sale and purchase of vegetables and fruits, meaning farmers can sell to whoever they want. The reform allows farmers direct access to consumers outside APMC markets where they have to pay for loading, unloading, transport, weighing and filling.

Plans to reform the APMC Act are not new. The previous United Progressive Alliance government at the centre had also wanted all states to push APMC reforms.

In 2006, the then Congress-NCP government had passed an APMC Model Act which provided for certain farmer-friendly measures like direct marketing licences to big retail buyers of farm produce. But the government buckled under pressure from APMC traders and labour unions and withdrew them.

Now, the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance central government has issued the same guidelines and also launched a scheme called e-National Agriculture Market which aims to establish a national online market for farmers. The latest set of APMC reforms, Chandrakant Patil said, will enable Maharashtra to participate in this scheme.

However, Giridhar Patil, a long-time supporter of deregulation who also worked in a panel formed by the Fadnavis government, is not pleased in this respect. The BJP government’s primary intention, he says, was “not to help the farmers but enter the APMC sector dominated by Congress and NCP".

“There are two amendments to the APMC Act. One proposes appointment of two outside experts to the APMC board. The other is to deregulate vegetables and fruits. By the first amendment, the intention to enter APMC boards which are dominated by NCP becomes clear. The move to deregulate vegetables and fruits from APMC, though apparently aimed at helping farmers, is actually a strategy to provide an alternative market to the traders. In regions like Vidarbha and Marathwada, most traders who trade in agriculture commodities are BJP or RSS men. In other parts of Maharashtra though, the BJP does not have much clout and traders are mostly associated with the NCP. By this amendment sold as reform, the BJP is eying this constituency," said Patil, calling it a “direct attack" on the NCP.

The mood is sombre in Baramati, Pawar’s hometown.

Yogesh Jagtap, NCP leader and president of the Baramati municipal council, said the BJP’s plan was to “push its people into the areas where NCP ruled". “The APMC decision is a very good example. A majority of APMCs in Maharashtra are dominated by NCP and BJP has not been able to conquer this field. But we are not worried because farmers, who elect APMC directors, are with us and they will see through this plan," he said.

Senior Congress leader and former minister Harshavardhan Patil, who is a member of the Maharashtra Cooperative Sugar Factories Federation and has political links to APMC markets, says the “so-called reforms are a strategy to dismantle a well-established system for political ends". He said the decisions in the cooperative sector and sugar industry were aimed at weakening the base of both the Congress and NCP.

“The Congress is as much affected," he said. At least 70% of the 200-odd sugar factories in Maharashtra are directly or indirectly controlled by Congress and NCP politicians.

He alleged that despite an estimated drop of 40% in Maharashtra’s sugar yield in 2016-17, the BJP-led governments at the centre and in the state have not offered any plan to help the industry.

“Maharashtra has some 200-odd sugar factories of which 111 are co-operative factories which means they are formed and run by sugarcane farmers. Since there is an estimate of only 5 million tonne yield of sugarcane, only around 100 factories will take part in the crushing season. If a sugar factory does not operate in the crushing season, it incurs a direct loss of ₹ 15 crore for the season. Who will compensate the factories for this loss?" he asked.

According to Harshavardhan Patil, the state’s sugar industry contributes around ₹ 5,000 crore per year to the government through various taxes.

“There will be a direct loss of ₹ 2,500 crore to the exchequer but the government seems interested in diminishing the importance of the sugar industry for political purposes," he said.

Target No. 4—the irrigation industry.

One of the pet programmes of chief minister Fadnavis is Jalyukta Shivar, a rural water conservation programme. It is a combination of 12 water conservation schemes to be implemented with people’s participation. One of the schemes is digging a farm pond if the farmer who owns the farm demands it. The government would bear the entire cost.

Since the programme is a combination of small conservation schemes instead of big dams that Maharashtra has historically preferred, it bypasses the lobby of contractors. The scheme was first thought about by former chief minister Prithviraj Chavan, but it was never effectively implemented it. Fadnavis has made this programme his own and kept a target of irrigating 6,000 villages in five years since 2014. So far, more than 2,000 villages have been covered.

According to Mumbai-based journalist and veteran political commentator Prakash Joshi, the programme, with its emphasis on decentralized water conservation, bypasses irrigation contractors who are close to the NCP.

“For decades in Maharashtra, the irrigation and conservation schemes have helped contractors more than the farmers. But Jalyukta Shivar is trying to dismantle this nexus also by driving out the contractor lobby. In rural areas, the power to determine availability and distribution of water is a great tool to expand political patronage and if the BJP manages to achieve this, it would also change the social and political dynamics in rural Maharashtra," Joshi said.

A senior NCP leader and a former minister in the Congress-NCP government admitted, on condition of anonymity, that the party was feeling the heat, especially in the cooperative and agriculture market sectors.

“We are worried because the BJP is doing everything in the garb of governance. Had it been only politics, we could have fought back. But they are using government for political ends," said this NCP leader, who has himself been affected by some of the decisions in the cooperative sector.

According to NCP legislator Shinde, the party has internally discussed this “BJP strategy" and is planning a counter-attack. Shinde, as leader of the APMC labour union, has been at the forefront of the protest against the APMC amendments.

According to Joshi, the state’s cooperatives, sugar industry, village-level water conservation, and agriculture produce marketing committees were dominated by the Congress until 1999, when Pawar split the party to form NCP and took the “best talent from the Congress" with him. He agreed the BJP government’s decisions were challenging the NCP in its strongholds, adding that these are tools to expand political patronage, which the NCP had used earlier as well.

“The first challenge to the NCP-dominated sectors came from globalization but Pawar not only managed to survive but also helped sectors benefit from globalization. The challenge this time looks more serious because the BJP is doing it in a very sophisticated manner using existing administrative and legal tools only to corner NCP," Joshi concluded.

A senior BJP minister from western Maharashtra, one of the architects of the strategy to corner NCP in the cooperative sector, said the Fadnavis government was not merely interested in making political gains.

“Each decision is based on merit. The NCP has not only dominated the cooperative sector but has also been the main factor responsible for its corruption. We are bailing out the sector. We don’t mind getting political advantage there. The farmers have welcomed APMC reforms," this BJP minister said, requesting anonymity.

Subscribe to Mint Newsletters * Enter a valid email * Thank you for subscribing to our newsletter.

Share Via