In manifestos: Cong’s tick-all eagerness vs BJP’s cagey confidence, but welfarism is common thread

The last two weeks of this month have seen the release of the poll manifestos of two key parties heading the rival national alliances in the forthcoming Lok Sabha polls. 

The Congress, which chose to call the document Nyay Patra, released its manifesto 10 days before the BJP unwrapped its Sankalp Patra last Sunday. And besides the overdrawn lines of ideological divergence, the manifestos have signs of how the two parties are looking at the big battle of 2024. 

As statements of a party’s worldview, policy outlook and point of emphasis on the issues of governance, these documents can give a sense of how these parties want to be seen by the electorate. That, however, is read with the fact that in their impact on the voters and outcomes, the manifestos haven’t mattered much, far less in the age of instant and round-the-clock political communication. At the same time, for the political register of the time, they reflect the self-image of the parties and their blueprint for the people and the statecraft. 

Ambitious vs self-assured

While the Congress’s manifesto seems too eager to tick as many boxes in its bid as a challenger, the BJP’s pitch exudes the air of a party assured of another term in the office. 

When the Congress has come up with an omnibus of “catch all basket” of promises to the electorate, the BJP seems to be seeking a renewal of its mandate with a relatively placid statement of a party that is upbeat about being at the helm of governance after the poll results. 

In the process, both the parties have tried to turn their staple campaign polemic over the last few months into considered policy prescriptions, even a roadmap for the republic. This has meant that a large part of the Congress manifesto draws on a critique of the incumbent BJP-led government at the Centre. At the same time, the BJP’s proposals are along a timeline of years leading to a realisation of India’s aspirations to be a developed nation in 2047, invoking “the Viksit Bharat” theme of its poll campaign. 

Welfarism redefined, with eye on support base

A glance at the two manifestos bring to fore a number of aspects that align with how both parties are placed in the contemporary polity, and the resultant policy outlook. Some of them mark the direction of promised political action in the national sphere.

First, to different degrees, both parties seem to be redefining welfarism as “charitable state” functions, to borrow political commentator Hilal Ahmed’s phrase. This trend has been seen over the last decade or so. 

Taking a cue from some of some offerings made by state governments, for instance, Congress’s  manifesto promises cash transfer of Rs 1 lakh to every poor family under the Mahalakshmi scheme, right to apprenticeship with an annual stipend of Rs 1 lakh, abolition of application fees for government examination and recruitment tests, education loan waivers and an array of promises such as Rs 25 lakh cashless health insurance. Moreover, there are promised measures like granting legal status to minimum support price. 

In comparison, the BJP, which is relying on the existing welfare schemes, has been modest in what it’s committing as there doesn’t seem to be any big ticket populist offer. But, that hasn’t meant that such promises are completely absent from the party’s basket. The party is offering free health coverage up to Rs 5 lakh for citizens aged above 70 years irrespective of their income group, cheap cooking gas via pipelines, raising the ceiling of MUDRA loans to Rs 20 lakh, among other allied proposals. That is, however, still a low key offering in a poll scenario where financial prudence isn’t seen as a electoral virtue when it comes to dole promises.

Even if they did it on a varying scale, the fact remains that both parties haven’t resisted the shorthand for a more rounded welfare politics. Such approach often bypasses the welfarist imagination of the long run and overlooks policies as empowering tools. In the process, offering  financial doles seems to be the cop-out ploy, often at the cost of state capacity. In overcommitting, bordering on instant populism, these offers not only strain governance with resource-profligacy but show little patience with crafting a more holistic approach to addressing the welfare goals.

Second, both the parties seem to be building on their reach out to the demographic groups that they have focused on in the lead-up to the Lok Sabha polls. Building on the political messaging of Rahul Gandhi’s Bharat Jodo Yatra, Congress’s 25 guarantees have tried to bring youth, women, workers and farmers under its abstractly defined fold of ‘equity and justice’. The party has sought to dovetail these promises with the resolve to conduct a caste census, and a promise of extending the 50 percent reservation cap for the SCs, STs and OBCs. This is a point of departure for the party which has hitherto not used caste mobilisation as a dogma for electoral appeal. The party may be testing the waters, but a foray into the caste turf hasn’t been the first option for parties having a significant presence in national politics. 

Meanwhile, the BJP’s demographic messaging revolves around GYAN – grameen (rural residents), yuva (youth), annadata (farmers) and nari (women) – an acronym that draws on PM Narendra Modi’s evocation of the current focus groups of government’s policies. The other social segments like tribals also find prominent mention. 

While the party hasn’t taken notice of the issue of caste census, it hasn’t forgotten to remind voters of its initiatives in implementing 10 percent reservation for the economically weaker sections (EWS). The party’s thinking on the issue seems to be moulded by observing how the caste enumeration issue takes shape in the years to come before politically committing to any national position on it.

The party’s current campaign stylebook of a leader-centric appeal also finds a clear reflection in the manifesto. The document is woven around the subtext of “Modi ki guarantee”, the party’s catchphrase coined in the run-up to the polls. That has set the template throughout the manifesto in almost a presidential mould of a reachout to the voters.

Third, the political pitch of the two manifestos also show the divergent points of emphasis of a challenger keen on making a mark after a decade out of office and an incumbent sounding cocky about a comeback. 

Old Hindutva appeal

The Congress strikes an apocalyptic tone about the current regime at the Centre, and appeals for a sense of urgency to “reverse the damage” – which along with an invocation of justice also promises a restoration of the sanctity of constitutional institutions and tenets. This is again a theme that had its preface in Rahul Gandhi’s yatra over the last year or so. And the fusion of constitutional morality with a wordy attack on the government at times gives the manifesto the tinge of a critique rather than an appeal to place an alternative.

As the party controlling levers of power at the Centre for a decade now, the BJP hasn’t forgotten to remind its core constituency of accomplishing its two key promises – abrogation of Article 370 and construction of Ram Temple in Ayodhya. At the same time, the party has renewed its commitment to bring the Uniform Civil Code and implement the Citizenship Amendment Act, the rules for which were notified recently. But the manifesto has steered clear of any mention of the National Register of Citizens, a far more complex and contentious action that had found a place in the party’s 2019 census. 

Besides these, the document hasn’t given place to any other issue which could be identified as a core element of its Hindu interest constituency. 

Foreign policy in manifesto fold

The sharply split chambers of national discourse have also taken foreign policy into their fold, with a once prized consensus gradually fading away. This is seen in how the BJP has pitched foreign policy gains while the Congress has tracked the government’s conduct of international relations and highlighted the need to let New Delhi find its “lost” footing in the global order. The spillover of such domestic political acrimony to foreign affairs is one of the more unsavoury bits of political conversations that these manifestos hoped to initiate.

When rescued from the esoteric realms of academic interest, the manifestos of the two principal forces in national politics mirror their respective perches in the country’s polity. Far from being seen as the cliched alternative visions of statecraft and policy, their points of emphasis are formed by their distance from power corridors. 

Congress’s ‘tick-all-boxes’ omnibus sounds keen enough to sound a bit quixotic, while the BJP’s somewhat lowkey and a bit cagey reach-out to voters prefaces a party that is awaiting the renewed task of governing once the polls are over.