Did India’s farmers ditch Modi’s BJP in the 2024 election?

Many major farm belts turned against India’s ruling party in the election, contributing to the sharp fall in its seats.

Mumbai, India – As the results of India’s national elections became clear on Tuesday, Narendra Dabhane felt a sense of achievement and relief.

The farmer from Maharashtra’s Yavatmal district was once an ardent admirer of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who had promised to address the struggles of farmers, including farm debt, in the state’s Vidarbha region. Modi had even visited Dabhane’s village of Dabhadi during his 2014 campaign to first become prime minister. The village was handpicked out of the 15,000 villages in the Vidarbha region for Modi’s outreach to farmers in 2014.

But after 10 years of Modi’s rule, those crises have deepened. So, in February, when Modi was visiting Yavatmal, Dabhane wanted to meet the prime minister to express his disappointment. The police, though, detained him and did not allow his protests. He was released after Modi left.

Yet, on Tuesday, when the results showed a dramatic fall in the BJP’s seat tally from Maharashtra, Dabhane felt vindicated. The party, which in 2019 had won 23 seats in the country’s second-most politically consequential state – Maharashtra sends 48 legislators to the lower house of India’s parliament, behind only Uttar Pradesh state – secured only nine seats this time around. Its National Democratic Alliance, which won 41 seats in 2019, got only 17 in 2024.

It is a pattern that appears to have played out across many key farm belts in India. Nationally, the BJP lost its majority after a decade of dominance, winning 240 seats in a house of 543, compared with 303 in 2019. Modi and his party are still expected to form India’s next government but will be