It was perhaps for the first time in the tenure of UPA 2 that the Congress party's top three—president Sonia Gandhi, vice-president Rahul Gandhi and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh—spoke from the same platform. They came armed with promises neatly packaged into the party's manifesto for the 2014 General Election. Unfortunately, the party's failure to live up to the promise of 2009, when the voters of India handed it a second consecutive term in office, is set to overshadow the new assurances circa 2014.
It is tough for a party that has spent 10 years in government to dramatically change course. The 2014 manifesto is a reflection of that. Some of the promises of 2014 are the failed ones of 2009, like the grand promise to reserve 33 percent of seats in Parliament for women, something the Congress had assured voters in 2009 would be in place for the 2014 election. Or the less grand, but game-changing promise of implementing the recommendations of the Administrative Reforms Commission, which if implemented five years ago would have overhauled India's archaic and obstructionist administrative apparatus. Why trust the Congress to do it now? Especially when you consider the fact that it promised and failed to implement in the course of UPA 2 the very sensible recommendations of several other commissions that it had set up in UPA 1, including the National Knowledge Commission.
Another war for the Congress. Reuters
Leave aside the repackaged old ideas. Consider the allegedly radical new ones. In keeping with its rights-based approach, the Congress is now promising a Right to Health and a Right to Homestead, following the relatively successful Right to Information, the only moderately successful Right to Work, the disastrous Right to Education and the largely unimplementable Right to Food.
Now a Right to a basic necessity like health is an unobjectionable principle -- what is contentious is the policy framework to achieve it. The Congress party's answer is simple: spend more money. The core of the Right to Health idea is to increase government spending on health to 3 percent of GDP. Unfortunately, the mechanics of how this money will be spent are sketchy—investing more in the Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana is fine and the idea to have five mobile health vans with diagnostic equipment in every district is good but the promise to upgrade the quality of primary health centres—the real core of the health crisis—is not new. And it is not a problem that will be solved by spending more money alone. In fact, more money will simply mean more leakage.
The details of the Right to Homestead are few, but again involve the governments spending more money in existing schemes like the Rajiv Awaas Yojana (for poor urban households) and Indira Awaas Yojana (for poor rural households). It's a pity that the party didn't think of certain obvious steps that could promote affordable housing like easing the strict Floor Space Index rules in cities, or freeing up large tracts of government-owned land to build affordable housing. But those would have contradicted the Congress's 'doles-approach' to all problems.
It would be a trifle unfair to say that the Congress plans to spend only on welfare. There is a promise in the manifesto to spend $1 trillion on infrastructure, including on ambitious projects like high speed rail connectivity to all towns with a population over 1 million. The question, of course, is where will all the money come from to finance this spending on infrastructure and the increased spending on welfare when the fiscal deficit is in danger territory?
What the manifesto lacks is an aggressive agenda of liberal economic reforms which would speed up economic growth fast enough to rein in the deficit and generate the resources for government spending. For example, there is no explicit mention of financial sector reform—in insurance, pensions, banking, bond markets—which could actually lead to financial inclusion and the provision of cheaper credit. Needless to say, there is no mention of reform in labour laws (though there is plenty of lip service to the welfare of workers), which is really the key to rapid growth in manufacturing and the creation of jobs.
The Congress party is clearly exhausted and bereft of new ideas after two terms in government. Fortunately, it hasn't quite resorted to even more desperate populism to win another term in office. There was talk that the party would include a promise for reservations for SCs/STs in private sector jobs, but it has only promised to evolve a national consensus on the issue.
Perhaps the Congress party has realised that there are limits to which it can stretch credibility and credulity—it's multiple promises to clamp down on corruption notwithstanding—especially after such a lackluster performance in government which belied so many hopes these last five years.
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