Modi Faces ‘Disappointed’ Voters in India’s Most Populous State

http://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/14/world/asia/modi-voters-india-uttar-pradesh.html

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KIWANA, India — Villagers in the cane-growing region in Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous state, helped sweep Prime Minister Narendra Modi to power nearly three years ago.

But this time, they say, his party cannot count on their votes.

“All farmers had their eyes set on Modi with a lot of hope,” said Dharam Pal Singh, 40, a father of three, sitting cross-legged on a string bed in the courtyard of his two-story concrete house in the village of Kiwana, in western Uttar Pradesh. “We’ve been disappointed.”

Voters in Uttar Pradesh began going to the polls last weekend, at the start of monthlong voting in seven phases across the state, and the final tally will not be known for several weeks. But if the vote is a referendum on Mr. Modi’s first three years, it will also, to a great extent, determine whether he can follow through on the ambitious agenda with which he swept to power in 2014.

Farmers are hurting here in the fields of northern India, where the sugar mills are months behind in payments for the cane harvest. In village centers, the tea sellers, painters and day laborers we meet say they are suffering, too, after Mr. Modi’s anti-corruption initiative in November banned the largest currency notes. That caused a severe cash shortage that has choked business.

Mr. Modi’s party, the Bharatiya Janata Party, commonly called the B.J.P., does not control the government of Uttar Pradesh, which determines sugar cane prices and the school and health policies that are the source of many local woes. But because Mr. Modi so successfully sold people on the promise of transformative change in the national campaign in 2014, villagers hold him responsible anyway.

And their sentiments — in a state whose population of more than 200 million accounts for one in six people in the country — are hugely important now. If Mr. Modi can win here, he will control the upper house of Parliament, which has successfully stymied his economic agenda since his landslide victory in 2014. He would also enter the 2019 campaign for re-election with enough momentum to appear almost invincible.

Two polls in January showed Mr. Modi’s B.J.P. in the lead, although one suggests the political alliance marshaled against him is experiencing a last-minute surge that has it in a statistical tie. Our interviews with villagers suggest that they are less inclined in this election to support Mr. Modi, whom they voted for in 2014 believing, perhaps unrealistically, he would transform their corner of rural India into a place of development and opportunity.

A Times Now-VMR survey conducted in late January gave the B.J.P. 202 of the 403 state assembly seats, compared with 147 for an alliance of the state’s ruling Samajwadi Party with India’s former ruling party, the Indian National Congress.

But an Axis-My-India poll for the India Today Group showed the B.J.P. in a statistical dead heat with the alliance, suggesting its opponents have surged in recent weeks.

The election may still go the B.J.P.’s way, but what seemed like a slam-dunk a month ago looks as if it could be very close. A major reason for the change in fortunes was the victory of Akhilesh Yadav, the 43-year-old chief minister of Uttar Pradesh and president of the Samajwadi Party, in a power struggle with his father. He emerged not only with control over the party, but also with his image burnished, experts said.

It served to distinguish Mr. Yadav in the public eye from his family and party, both with images tarnished by years in power in a state that is performing poorly by most measures, experts say.

“Before the fight, the biggest selling point for the B.J.P. was, ‘Surely you don’t want another term with these unsavory guys,’” said Siddharth Varadarajan, editor of The Wire, an online Indian news site, in an interview. “Now that Akhilesh has got them off his back, he’s cleansed the image of his government as nonperforming, where gangsters had sway.”

But at a more fundamental level, disappointed villagers said in interviews that they had given up hope that any politician would be able to change things and had instead fallen back on traditional caste allegiances.

“Modi had promised good days,” Kaloo Kureshi, 38, a day laborer who says he voted for Mr. Modi in 2014, said at a tea stall in the town of Shamli. “If he gave us good days, everybody would be voting for him now.”

Farming and brickmaking continue to be the principal sources of employment in western Uttar Pradesh, but most people have radically different aspirations for their children. Though they live far from the glittering malls and high-tech companies of India’s big cities, they want their children to receive the education they need to get jobs in the modern economy they see on television. That brings enormous frustration because local government schools are wholly inadequate to the task.

Mr. Singh’s wife, Rekha, sitting across from him on the string bed in their courtyard, said their children needed to be taught English so they could get good jobs, but that the government schools still taught in Hindi. In addition, teachers are frequently absent. More than 31 percent of rural teachers in Uttar Pradesh are absent on any given day, compared with a nationwide rate of nearly 24 percent, a survey by Karthik Muralidharan at the University of California, San Diego, found in 2010.

In village after village, parents complained about the government schools. But with the sugar mills months behind in payments, the farmers have been unable to pay school fees, making them feel powerless to demand changes.

“We have to stand by quietly now,” said Jay Kumar, 32, sitting in the courtyard of the house he shares with his father and several brothers. “We dare not tell the teachers anything since we can’t even pay school fees on time.”

And Mr. Kumar is among the affluent people in his village of Khandrawali. Ten cows and buffalo lie around his courtyard in the late morning as he and a group of male relatives discuss politics.

In 2014, they say, they voted for Mr. Modi, believing he would bring good governance. But things have gotten worse locally, they say. Even though Mr. Kumar is a member of the elected village governing body, the panchayat, he, too, was paid months late for his sugar cane harvest. Crime is worse after riots that took place between Hindus and Muslims in nearby villages in 2013, leading thousands of Muslims to flee.

“People come and snatch our mobiles and steal our buffalo at gunpoint,” he said.

A few miles away are villages of Jaats, a different caste of Hindus who also voted heavily in favor of Mr. Modi. On a village corner in Lisarh, a sugar cane farmer, Vipin Malik, and a group of men chatted outside a store in the afternoon, reclining in wicker chairs.

“There won’t be a single vote in my village for Modi,” Mr. Malik said, folding his arms across his chest and leaning back in his chair.

Mr. Modi’s currency ban has further dimmed his appeal. The local bank has not had enough cash for three months, Mr. Malik and other residents of Lisarh said.

In Shamli, the nearest town, where the best private schools and doctors’ offices are, Mr. Modi’s party also appears out of favor, in large part because of the cash shortage.

Mohammed Arshad, 26, a house painter wearing a Nike cap, said he was getting far less work because of the shortage. “People who are supposed to pay me are unable to, and I can’t pay daily wage laborers,” he said.

With so many people barely working, demand for tea and snacks has fallen by 75 percent, said Mohammed Yunus, 54, a tea stall owner, stirring three shallow pots of sweets and samosas.

“Those who had four teas now get two teas, and they are cutting out sweets,” he said.

Meherbaan Ahmed, who sells old tires, said business had almost shut down since the currency ban. “We don’t even have winter clothes for our children. We are all worried.”

“In 2014, everybody, even the smallest kids, were saying, ‘Modi, Modi.’ Now nobody is asking about him,” Mr. Ahmed said.