And taxing rich farmers is politically dangerous. Many leaders across the political spectrum come from a farming background and have considerable land holdings.

So measures to help the 833 million people who live in villages in India also benefit landowners like Singh. He can buy fertilizer at reduced rates, a subsidy that costs the government about $10 billion a year nationally, more than it spends on healthcare or higher education. Farmers also get cheaper electricity than factories or homes. Some states, like Punjab and Tamil Nadu, offer power virtually for free.

“Most of the benefits of fertilizer subsidy and minimum support price go to farmers who have irrigation facilities and that are mostly large farmers,” said Ajay Vir Jakhar, Chairman of Bharat Krishak Samaj, a farmer’s lobby group. “Even the way support price mechanism is designed, it benefits the larger farmer as they have larger surplus to sell.”

The federal government, the single biggest buyer of food crops, purchases cereals such as rice and wheat at guaranteed prices from farmers and sells grain to the poor at subsidized rates through a chain of fair-price shops across the country.

“It’s a simple case of money laundering.”

Such largesse hampers India’s fight to curb Asia’s widest budget deficit, control inflation and win faster interest rate cuts from the central bank. The combined federal and state fiscal situation is a key impediment to a rating upgrade even as Modi pledged to narrow the federal budget gap to a nine-year low of 3.5 percent of GDP this year.

Singh says he would pay tax if the government provided modern irrigation facilities to farmers and ensured regular supply of electricity instead of providing cheap power at odd hours when demand from industry ebbs.

“A farmer doesn’t mind paying income tax provided he gets the right amount for his produce,” said Singh, wearing Levi’s jeans and gemstone finger rings, while peacocks wandered across the lawn of his house in Hapur. The land adjoining the property, with mango orchards and sugar cane, has been farmed by his family for generations. “The only difference between me and a small farmer is that I don’t have to worry about my next meal.”

In the February budget, Jaitley promised to double farmers’ incomes and proposed a laundry-list of measures—more rural roads and irrigation, better management of groundwater, more organic farming, modern wholesale markets, increased credit and improved crop insurance.

Such measures also tend to benefit larger landowners more than poor farmers. States like Punjab and Haryana, where farms tend to be larger, get the lion’s share of handouts and boast modern irrigation systems for over 80 percent of cultivated land.