Lok Sabha polls 2019: How Modi's PM-KISAN may translate into votes for BJP

The cash dole to farmers without they doing any work will have major economic, political and psychological repercussions

The National Democratic Alliance’s (NDA’s) Rs 75,000-crore income support scheme for farmers (PM-KISAN) could potentially prove a vote catcher for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the Lok Sabha elections 2019. The amount of money promised to India’s land-owning farmers constitutes an important component of their incomes, consumption, savings and surpluses left with agricultural households every month. This plays out even more starkly in the populous and electorally crucial states mainly in the Hindi belt than in the less populous, less electorally significant and richer ones like Punjab, Kerala and Haryana.

The scheme announced in the incumbent Narendra Modi government’s