Down history lane - The Loan Waiver Promise that had brought BJP to power in Madhya Pradesh in 1990

Lalit Shastri

Deepak Tiwari, a former Madhya Pradesh Correspondent of The Week, now prefers to be introduced not as a seasoned journalist and political commentator but as an ex-Vice Chancellor of Makhanlal Chaturvedi National University of Journalism and Communication, an office he held for a short duration when Kamalnath was the State Chief Minister. With the advantage of hindsight, he has written a piece published on the front page of Dainik Bhaskar on 13 October 2023. In it he writes: "भाजपा की यह सरकार अपने प्रसिद्ध नारे 'भाजपा का कहना साफ, हर किसान का कर्ज माफ' पर चुनी गई थी। जब कर्ज माफी की बात नई सरकार के सामने खड़ी हुई, तब पता चला कि सरकार के पास इतना पैसा है ही नहीं।" (The BJP was elected to power on its popular farmers' 'Loan waiver' slogan. But when the government was confronted with the challenge of meeting it's electoral promise , it realised that it did not have the resources to meet this end).

Tiwari's observation in the above piece on BJP's election plank that had brought the party to power in March 1990 has come after the passage of more than three decades. 

When BJP was shouting from rooftops the Rin Mukti (farmers' Loan waiver) slogan and every wall in Madhya Pradesh villages had been painted with it, I had grilled the then Madhya Pradesh BJP President Sunderlal Patwa, who subsequently became Chief Minister, through a series of exclusive news stories blasting the loan waiver promise. I had called BJP's bluff by underscoring the big question: "where is the money and who will bear the cost of farmers' Loan waiver?" Barring me, the entire news media and so-called bigwigs of journalism covering Madhya Pradesh were tongue tied in that moment.

When I was in the process of writing my exclusive investigative reports on BJP's hollow loan waiver promise in mid-1989, a fellow journalist, who had worked with me under the same roof, had even tried to ruffle my feathers. Once when I was responding to a rejoinder by Patwa and was trying to meet the deadline, this very journalist, using the most foul language had tried to scare me from my path and in the presence of the entire editorial staff, he had said: "Patwa will screw you once he becomes the Chief Minister".

Postscript: Mr Patwa was gracious enough to allot me a house in the prestigious Char Imli area of Bhopal under the journalists' quota soon after he became Chief Minister.

Check: Sunderlal Patwa: Politician to the core who defied the mundane