Farmers voted overwhelmingly for Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the 2014 general elections that swept him to power. He cannot count on them doing so again, as a crash in commodity prices and surging fuel costs stoke anger in the countryside.

Four years ago, the BJP swept Uttar Pradesh, winning 73 of the State’s 80 Lok Sabha seats, as the rural poor — swayed by promises of higher crop prices — deserted the Congress.

Now, facing criticism for not improving living standards in the countryside, where 70 per cent of India’s 1.3 billion people live, analysts and farm economists said Modi would find it hard to repeat the feat in next year’s general elections.

"Modi promised to double farmers’ income but our earning has halved because of his apathy and anti-farmer policies," said sugar cane grower Uday Vir Singh, 53, plonking down on a wicker chair and smoking his hookah.

Nearly half a dozen farmers sitting with Singh on a hand-woven rope cot, and many of others in Kairana — which elected a joint Opposition candidate from the Rashtriya Lok Dal in a key by-election — accused Modi and the Yogi Adityanath administration of failing to live up to their promises.

"Modi is a very good salesman but we are not going to fall prey to his glib talk again," said 55-year-old Narendra Kalhande, who grows cane on his 2.5-acre farm.

Agriculture Minister Radha Mohan Singh defended the government’s record, citing initiatives on irrigation, crop insurance and electronic trading platforms for farmers to sell produce. "For farmers, Prime Minister Modi’s 48 months have been much better than the Congress’ rule of 48 years," Singh told Reuters.

In 2014, higher inflation and sluggish growth helped Modi trounce Congress, which had long counted the rural poor as its core constituency. Since then, the economy has picked up, recording the fastest in nearly two years in the first three months of 2018, helped by higher growth in the farm sector.

But lower food prices, weaker farm wages and modest support prices have hurt most of India’s 263 million farmers, who typically own less than 2 hectares of land.

In the past year, Modi’s popularity has fallen by 12 percentage points among farmers, according to a survey by the CSDS.

Farmer organisations in some States began a 10-day strike on Friday, stopping produce to protest a steep drop in the prices.

Prices of pulses, a key crop for Indian farmers, have fallen 25-30 per cent below the Minimum Support Price (MSP), as higher imports and bumper local crops bumped up supplies. While the government announces support prices for more than 20 crops each year to set a benchmark, State agencies actually buy only rice and wheat at MSP.

Vegetable prices, especially onions, cabbage and tomatoes have fallen 25 per cent from last year, largely because of the lack of refrigerated trucks. Milk prices have also dived by more than 25 per cent.

Ashok Gulati, a farm economist who advised India’s last government, said there were three policy options to support farmers: building buffer stocks to soak up excess supply, acting to boost exports or building capacity for processing farm commodities.

Most of those measures would require long-term structural changes. However, analysts predict that in the run-up to the elections, Modi is likely to announce more populist, short-term fixes such as higher MSPs and farm loan waivers.

Many farmers complained they are still reeling from disruptions caused by the launch of the GST in July 2017 and demonetisation decision in November 2016.

"Expectations were high from the government, but the fact is that the plight of farmers is far worse now than what it was four years ago," Gulati said.