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By:

Abhijit Mulye

21 August 2024 at 11:29:11 am

Fadnavis writes off Rs 48,000 crore

Mumbai: In a clear indication that the Maharashtra government is leaving no stone unturned to keep the state’s agrarian base happy, Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis has unleashed yet another massive populist measure. Hot on the heels of relaxing the eligibility criteria to ensure a blanket farm loan waiver, the Chief Minister announced a sweeping Rs 48,000 crore waiver on the pending electricity bills of farmers across the state. Addressing a ‘Krutadnyata Sohala’ (gratitude ceremony)...

Fadnavis writes off Rs 48,000 crore

Mumbai: In a clear indication that the Maharashtra government is leaving no stone unturned to keep the state’s agrarian base happy, Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis has unleashed yet another massive populist measure. Hot on the heels of relaxing the eligibility criteria to ensure a blanket farm loan waiver, the Chief Minister announced a sweeping Rs 48,000 crore waiver on the pending electricity bills of farmers across the state. Addressing a ‘Krutadnyata Sohala’ (gratitude ceremony) organized by the BJP Kisan Morcha at Mumbai’s Yashwantrao Chavan Pratishthan on Wednesday, Fadnavis declared that farmers using agricultural pumps of up to 7.5 horsepower will see their historical electricity dues completely wiped out. The announcement was met with the traditional sounding of the Tutari and thunderous applause from hundreds of farmers who had gathered from every corner of the state. The Chief Minister framed the mega-sop as a necessary step to “wipe the farmers’ slate clean,” enabling them to write a new chapter of prosperity. Calculated Pitch The timing and scale of the announcement underscore a government that is boldly embracing populist economics to solidify its political footprint in rural Maharashtra. While Fadnavis maintained that these decisions were taken purely in the interest of the farmers—pointing out that the original loan waiver was announced when no elections were in sight—the political undertones were unmistakable. Taking a sharp dig at the opposition, the Chief Minister accused rival parties of running “political shops” in the name of farmer agitations without understanding the government’s genuine intent. Asserting his grassroots connection, Fadnavis proudly claimed, “I do not make decisions sitting in my house. I am a farmer myself, a man of the soil.” He openly defended the government’s recent move to strip away the stringent conditions attached to the blanket farm loan waiver, signaling that his administration will not hesitate to clear bureaucratic hurdles if it means putting money directly into the hands of the rural voter. Balancing Sops Even as he rained freebies, the Chief Minister attempted to balance the populist optics with a dose of economic pragmatism. He acknowledged that handing out repeated loan waivers is a symptom of deep-rooted agrarian distress, not a permanent cure. Pointing to the Rs 95,000 crore in aid currently being pumped into the agricultural sector by the state and central governments, Fadnavis outlined his administration’s shift toward an investment-driven agricultural model. He championed the success of schemes like ‘Jalyukt Shivar’ and ‘Magel Tyala Shettale’ (farm ponds on demand), claiming these initiatives have already empowered farmers to harvest multiple crops a year. Addressing the core issue of farming costs, he noted that the government already subsidises power to the tune of Rs 25,000 crore annually. By coupling this with a push for solar pumps and solar agricultural feeders, he promised that 100 percent of the state’s farmers would receive uninterrupted daytime electricity by the end of the year. Infra Dream Looking beyond immediate financial relief, the Chief Minister laid out a grandiose vision to permanently drought-proof Maharashtra’s most vulnerable regions. A staggering Rs 6 lakh crore infrastructure pipeline is being planned to ensure the next generation never witnesses a drought. Fadnavis detailed ambitious river-linking projects, including the Wainganga-Nalganga link, to divert excess floodwaters to parched regions. The state plans to construct 24 new dams and raise the height of 16 existing ones to ensure not a single district in Vidarbha faces water scarcity. Furthermore, massive engineering feats are on the drawing board to divert 200 TMC of floodwater from Western Maharashtra to Marathwada, and lift 275 TMC of wasted water from the Ulhas basin to quench the thirst of North Maharashtra and Marathwada. By marrying immediate, massive debt relief with long-term infrastructure promises, the Fadnavis administration is aggressively cementing its pro-farmer narrative. As the Yashwantrao Chavan auditorium echoed with whistles and cheers, it became highly evident that the government’s strategy of pairing mega populist waivers with big-ticket rural dreams is striking a powerful chord with the state’s agrarian voters.

Anchoring India’s Resilient Future

For nearly half a decade, the global geopolitical landscape has been stuck in a state of permanent turbulence. The protracted war in Ukraine, the protectionist tariff regimes of the Trump presidency, and the volatile escalation of hostilities between the United States, Israel, and Iran are no longer distant regional frictions. Their tremors have rewritten the global order and weaponized transnational supply chains.


In today’s splintered global order, nations are ruthlessly prioritising domestic stability and resource security over collective international arrangements. India is no exception. It is against this volatile backdrop that Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s recent five-nation tour must be judged.


The Gulf Realignment

In an era dictated by the imperatives of energy transition, diversifying energy baskets is no longer a policy choice but a structural necessity. This explains the deliberate inclusion of both the UAE and Norway in the Prime Minister’s itinerary. But viewing the UAE purely through the narrow prism of crude oil reserves is to miss the deeper, more volatile geopolitical undercurrents reshaping the Gulf.


The visit coincided with a historic inflection point in Gulf geopolitics: the UAE’s decision to exit OPEC. But the landscape has altered radically. With the rise of US shale production, OPEC’s market share has sharply declined.


The UAE’s calculations are driven less by Washington and more by deep-seated friction with Saudi Arabia. Abu Dhabi had grown weary of Riyadh’s de facto dominance within OPEC, which stifled its capacity to expand independent production. In breaking away, the UAE has de-linked its energy policy from cartel politics. This regional realignment is also playing out in geo-economics: Abu Dhabi’s abrupt demand for Pakistan to repay a $3.2 billion loan - prompting a Saudi bailout - underscores the growing strategic distance between the two Gulf giants. Prime Minister Modi’s visit seeks to navigate these very fault lines to secure India’s long-term economic interests.


For New Delhi, a decoupled UAE presents a unique window of opportunity. As Abu Dhabi scales up production outside the constraints of a cartel, it requires guaranteed, high-capacity markets and India offers the perfect economic counterparty to secure supplies at highly competitive rates. This visit marks Prime Minister Modi’s eighth tour of the UAE since 2015. The relationship has been institutionalised through the Comprehensive Strategic Partnership Agreement and the CEPA trade pact.


While trade and investments dominated the public narrative, the true breakthrough of this visit lay in a profound restructuring of defence and energy infrastructure. The economic dividends of this relationship are already formidable. Bilateral trade has crossed $100 billion, while the UAE has emerged as a major foreign investor in India.


Concurrently, the strategic landscape received an upgrade and the energy architecture was fundamentally re-risked. Last year, India imported 11 per cent of its crude requirements from the UAE. To insulate this vital supply chain from the perennial volatility of the Strait of Hormuz, Abu Dhabi is doubling its export capacity by 2027 via an additional pipeline to the port of Fujairah, enabling Indian vessels to bypass the choke point entirely.


This is reinforced by ADNOC’s commitment to scale up its crude reserves within Indian facilities, effectively expanding India’s strategic petroleum reserves by roughly 70 per cent and providing New Delhi a cost-free cushion during global crises. Bolstering this maritime-industrial alignment is a new MoU to establish a $5-billion ship repair cluster at Vadinar, Gujarat.


From Space to Semiconductor Sovereignty

If the Gulf leg of the tour was about reinforcing traditional energy security, the tour of the Nordic nations looked firmly toward the future. In an era where the geopolitical premium is shifting from fossil fuels to green technology, artificial intelligence, and semiconductor supply chains, the Nordic states offer critical technological partnerships. New Delhi’s engagement with these nations has evolved beyond standard trade into high-tech collaborative frameworks. The Prime Minister’s participation in the India-Nordic Summit, which had been delayed following the security situation post the Pahalgam attack, underscores this shift.


By visiting Norway, a major non-Gulf oil and natural gas exporter, the Prime Minister strategically diversified India’s energy dependency away from volatile West Asia supply chains while securing a long-term resource anchor under the newly implemented India-EFTA trade pact. New Delhi’s outreach to Stockholm and Amsterdam yielded high-value strategic dividends that seamlessly bridged space exploration, deep tech, and critical infrastructure.


In Sweden, this materialized through a landmark collaboration between ISRO and the Swedish Institute of Space Physics for India’s upcoming Shukrayan Venus mission. This trust extends to hard security; following the exclusion of Chinese vendors from Sweden’s telecom networks, India has emerged as a reliable digital partner, while Swedish defence giant SAAB is already establishing India’s first 100 per cent FDI ‘Carl Gustav’ weapon manufacturing facility in Haryana.


Meanwhile, the Netherlands leg masterfully balanced the cultural diplomacy of a returned Chola-era copper plate from Leiden University with hard-nosed techno-politics. The crown jewel of this engagement was Tata Electronics signing a pivotal agreement with ASML, the Dutch multinational holding a virtual global monopoly on advanced semiconductor photolithography. As Tata builds its $11-billion premier chip fabrication plant in Dholera, Gujarat, this alignment marks a major victory in India’s quest for semiconductor sovereignty amidst the intensifying US-China tech war.


Against a backdrop of rising global volatility, Modi and his Italian counterpart Giorgia Meloni held comprehensive talks, elevating India-Italy relations to a Special Strategic Partnership. Alongside establishing a new defence industrial roadmap, the two nations committed to driving annual bilateral trade to €20 billion by 2029.


Terrestrial Blueprint

Modi’s visit to the iconic 32-kilometre-long Afsluitdijk dam underscores New Delhi’s intent to deploy Dutch water management expertise to de-risk its own ambitious Kalpsar project in Gujarat’s Gulf of Khambhat. Envisaged as a mega-scale, Rs. 85,000 to 90,000-crore coastal reservoir, the Kalpsar project aims to construct a 30-kilometre dam to establish a massive freshwater lake, combat critical land salinity, and pioneer tidal power generation.


In a fractured world order where reliability is the ultimate currency, India has successfully positioned itself not just as a defensive actor safeguarding its immediate needs, but as a resilient, self-reliant pole in the emerging global architecture.


(The writer is a political commentator. Views personal.)

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