Monsoon to impact election results in Bihar?

Other than stockbrokers, economy watchers and companies with significant rural exposure, Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, too, will be hoping for a normal monsoon this crucial election year. Data suggests that drought, especially in an election year, followed by significant fall in agricultural production, hurts an incumbent.

In 2005, for instance, the state received only 88 per cent of usual rainfall, the lowest in the past five years. As a result, the agriculture sector saw de-growth of nearly 14 per cent, with per capita income, falling 1.5 per cent. That was the year Lalu Prasad's Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) lost power in Bihar, after an uninterrupted run of 15 years. Bihar voted twice in 2005 to elect MLAs. The February elections threw a hung assembly but elections held in October-November resulted in heavy reverses for the incumbent. The people perhaps felt the real impact of the fall in farm production in the second half of the year.

"To say a fall in agriculture production alone led to the kind of election verdict we had, will be too simplistic, since electoral outcome is dependent on many variables. But a farm fall would have contributed to rural distress. It would have impacted the subsistence of a large number of people living in rural areas, as fall in agriculture production tends to push up prices of food items. As there is a lack of an alternative, a depressed agricultural sector tends to have a cascading effect," argues N K Chaudhary, economist and former principal of Patna College.

Incidentally, in 2010, when Bihar went for assembly elections, was a drought year, too, as the state received only 67 per cent of the normal rainfall, the lowest since 2001. But there was no resultant fall in farm output. The sector, in fact, grew by a whopping 20 per cent in 2010-11. The incumbent, Nitish Kumar of Janata Dal (United), this time in coalition with the Bharatiya Janata Party, came back to power with a thumping majority.

Switch to the 2014 Lok Sabha elections and the pattern of poor farm growth impacting the incumbent becomes clear again. The state experienced two years of poor rainfall in 2012 and 2013. Rainfall was 79 per cent and 76 per cent of the normal, respectively. It impacted agricultural production in the state and the sector saw a 12 per cent fall in 2013-14, the year preceding the Lok Sabha elections. Productivity also fell from 2,778 kilogrammes a hectare the previous year, to 2,595 kilogrammes a hectare in 2013-14. In fact, productivity peaked in 2011-12 and has been declining since then. As we all know, the ruling JD(U) suffered heavy reverses in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections. The BJP and its allies swept the poll, winning 31 of the total of 40 seats in the state. Experts say it is quite natural that the mood of the people in a state with 89 per cent rural population and 76 per cent people directly dependent on agriculture will depend a great deal on how the farm sector fares. But it is also true the size of average landholdings is very low in the state. Nearly 83 per cent of all holdings are less than a hectare. What it essentially means is that rural Bihar is dominated by small and marginal farmers and landless labourers. They are assumed to suffer less, owing to dip in farm production.

"The depressed economic condition in rural Bihar forces people to migrate. It is the group consisting of small farmers and landless labour, which sends more people outside the state. In political terms, this group is more likely to vote for non-NDA (National Democratic Alliance led by the BJP) parties. A Dip in farm production means likely loss of votes for Lalu or Nitish due to migration of their likely supporters," observes Rakesh Ranjan of Patna University who has been associated with the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) and has been doing election surveys for many years now.

Incidentally, in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, of the nine seats that non-NDA parties won in the state, eight received much more than the average rainfall, both in 2013 and 2014. It could, then, be safely assumed that the farm sector would have done well in those areas.