dna edit: Welfare & reforms

The whiff of cynicism and derision that greeted the Congress manifesto was both predictable and understandable. Despite the Stalinist statistics doled out about increase in food grain production (2004: 213 million 2014: 263 m), generation of electricity (2004: 112,700 MW, 2014: 234,600 MW); rural roads built (2004: 51,511 km, 2014: 389,578 km); coal production (2004: 361 million tonnes, 2014: 554 mt), the number of telephone subscribers (2004: 3.36 crore; 2014: 95-plus crore), and even if exaggeration and fudging are given their due, there is no doubt that India has moved on, things have changed and the numbers have only grown. The question is whether Congress can claim credit for all that has gone right. And by the same criterion, it cannot be castigated for all that is wrong.

For example, how much of the increase in food production is due to good monsoon? Congress can argue that it is due to the attractive minimum support price, which would not be entirely true. The government does not procure, and the Congress knows this, more than a quarter of the total production. Food grain prices have to find their own levels, which cannot be entirely managed by the government. Even if it had wanted to, it cannot because of logistic and structural constraints. It can also say that it is the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) which has empowered the vulnerable sections of the rural population to buy food grains. The question that will be debated is whether the poor people have managed to stand on their feet without looking to government for largesse. The difference between poverty alleviation and removal of poverty is not a thin line, except in arguments.

The Congress dilemma, and it is also that of the country, is the balancing act that needs to be done between growth-oriented reforms and social welfare. Excepting ideologically blinkered economists, it is recognised both by the BJP and the Communist parties, which occupy the far ends of the political spectrum, reform and welfare measures have to go together. The Congress displays the political nimbleness to manage both, at the manifesto level. And it has translated the old socialist imperatives into the new language of rights, which it has elegantly called the rights regime.

The clever thing for the opposition parties is to quietly steal the ideas expressed in the Congress manifesto and implement them more effectively than what the Congress would manage to do. It will be a waste of intellectual energy to rubbish the Congress manifesto because of the Congress failures in governance. It does not mean that the Congress ideas cannot be improved upon, or more radical ideas cannot be mooted. Unfortunately, the other political parties are not keen on the intellectual investment to think about India’s future. The Congress is shameless enough to filch ideas from everywhere and to make them its own, and it is not a bad thing if it helps shape good policies and programmes.

It would have been courteous if the Congress manifesto-makers had acknowledged the Anna Hazare-Arvind Kejriwal agitators who had started the business of evincing the views of one and all through the new medium of Internet while preparing the Jan Lokpal Bill. The Congress has claimed that it had carried wide consultations in preparing the manifesto. But the practice was initiated by the Hazare-Kejriwal group.