Congress Gujarat Manifesto: Tall Promises, Few Ideas, Far Too Late

This is the 1st Gujarat election in decades that seems like it’ll be decided by economic factors & caste identities.

Manifestos of political parties in India are perhaps among the most banal aspects in all the brouhaha that surrounds an election process, inviting the least attention from voters and commentators. Many a time, political parties display that “who cares for manifestos” attitude when they come up with shoddy promises and proposals in their manifestos with a confidence that none will read or remember them.

Why Did BJP Delay its Manifesto?

In the present Gujarat Vidhan Sabha election, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has gone a step ahead in making this indifference official by delaying declaring its manifesto less than 24 hours before polling for the first phase of election gets underway. This is probably out of the BJP’s conviction that Narendra Modi's name is more than a manifesto for Gujarat’s voters.

Or, is it that the BJP has run out of truly innovative ideas on governance and development to attract the people of Gujarat who are fatigued due to continuous propaganda over the so-called ‘Gujarat model’?

Alternative Vision of the Congress

However, no such luxury was available to the Gujarat Congress. Unlike the BJP, the Congress could not have escaped the declaration of a manifesto containing its alternative policies to peg the hopes of voters it is trying to wean away from the ‘Gujarat model’ that its leaders have been constantly deriding as unjust and crony-capitalist in nature.

It needed to break new ground to dissuade a sizeable mass of voters, who have developed unflinching emotional and political loyalties to the BJP and its Prime Minister Narendra Modi during more than two decades of their rule.

This alternative vision of the Congress is now captured in its manifesto which has been aptly titled as “Navsarjan Gujarat” (reconstruction of Gujarat).

This 60-page comprehensive document contains the results of the diligent efforts put in by a team of Congress party intellectuals, led by the US-based technocrat Sam Pitroda, a Gujarati by origin.

The Congress manifesto systematically lays down the policy terrain in agricultural, educational, health, housing and governance spheres. It makes concrete, numerically measurable commitments to youth, women, students, farmers, scheduled castes and tribes, other backward castes, economically backward classes and several other section of Gujarat’s society.

These socio-economic proposals for the next five years are stated to have been inspired by the thinking of Mahatma Gandhi and Ambedkar. It contains a promise of replacement of the top-down ‘Gujarat model’ of development with a bottom-up ‘Gandhian model’ of development.

Promises Made to the Patidars and Dalits

The Congress manifesto fulfils the promise made to Hardik Patel to include in its manifesto a commitment “to bring in a bill” to grant reservation to Patidar community and other economically backward classes – over and above the present 49 percent quota for SCs, STs and OBCs – under a tangled legal formulae tied to Article 31(c) and Article 46 of the Constitution.

It also promises strict disciplinary action against the concerned police staff who were involved in the killing of 14 Patidar youths in 2015 and offers higher compensation to their families than what the BJP government had announced.

The quota promise will prove the most difficult legal and political challenge for the Congress if elected to power. It shall open up a Pandora’s box when it faces voters from similar communities in Karnataka, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra in the next round of elections to their state assemblies.

For the Dalits, the party manifesto promises a Special Investigation Team for probing the infamous Una flogging incident of 2016 as well as death of three Dalits in police firing at Thangadh in 2012.

Pro-People Thrust

This is the first election in Gujarat after many decades which seems set to be decided as much by economic factors as by the caste identities. Losses to the small and medium-sized businesses caused by the combined effect of GST and demonetisation, agricultural distress resulting from falling prices of agricultural produce and economic policies favouring a few big industrial houses have been highlighted in a big way in the Congress campaign. What does the party propose to do to rectify this if it returns to power?

Expectedly, and in line with the pro-people ideological thrust that Rahul Gandhi has espoused of late, the Congress manifesto makes a lot of significant promises aimed at luring farmers, middle and lower middle income groups, as well as deprived social classes.

It offers loan waiver to farmers; free water supply for irrigation purposes; declaration of minimum support price for various crops before the sowing season; bonus support price for Gujarat-specific special crops like groundnut, potatoes and onion.

On the education front, the manifesto talks about conversion of all self-financing courses in government-funded universities to grant-in-aid courses, thereby reducing fee burden by almost 80 percent. In an effort to reach out to the youngsters, manifesto mentions unemployment allowance to youth up to Rs 4,000 per month; withdrawals of contractual and fixed salary system of employment in the government and semi-government sectors that has become widespread during the BJP rule.

Among other things the manifesto promises slashing of petrol and diesel prices by Rs 10 per litre by reducing state taxes; reduction of property tax by 50 percent for small shopkeepers and units in the urban areas; 50 percent reduction in electricity charges for consumers; fixed electricity rates for low-power consumption households; pension for widows and senior citizens and so on.

Other Policy Proposals

While the party manifesto is mostly silent on the big industries and big investments, it seeks to assuage the small and medium sized businesses by promising loan waiver to SMEs. It also promises efforts to get small traders exempted from GST through central government action.

Reduction in stamp duty for getting loans from banks; giving special status of cottage industry to Surat’s diamond industry badly affected by GST and demonetisation; fast-track courts for economic offences etc, are other targeted policy proposals that Congress party has promised, in a bid to expand its base among potentially favourable interest groups.

No New Ideas for Tackling Issues

This Congress manifesto can doubtless become a helpful guide to action for its government if the party scrapes through to power. However, it does not go the full length in making a qualitative departure from the neo-liberal thrust of the so-called ‘Gujarat model’ and become fully distinct in its ideological appeal.

Besides, it is deficient in terms of new ideas on employment generation and seeks to take the burden of job-creation on the government in the socialist manner, which is neither viable nor desirable in the contemporary context.

The specific fiscal measures to compensate for the huge expenditure on the above-mentioned subsidies and popular schemes (including a seemingly impossible promise to construct 25 lakh houses in the next five years as well as giving a house to all women in the state) are not spelt out.

References to minorities and secularism are conspicuous by their absence in the manifesto, putting a stamp on its new soft Hindutva line. Likewise, the manifesto team could have worked on some innovative solutions to transform the deteriorating public health sector in the state.

Delay in Publishing the Manifesto

Even as the Gujarat Congress manifesto attempts to give a voice to the concerns and issues of the common people in a substantive way, it has been published too late during the Gujarat election process to make a significant impact. There is no way it would be able to take it to the variety of stakeholders and affected sections that are likely to take its tangible promises seriously.

The local print and electronic media, expectedly, has given a total short shrift to the release and provisions of its manifesto. The Congress appears clueless as to how it would make its future roadmap and agenda known to the people before they go to the voting booth on 9 and 14 December.

(The writer is a professor of political science at Maharaja Sayajirao University, Vadodara. He tweets at @Amit_Dholakia. This is an opinion piece and the views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for the same.)

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