How Rahul's manifesto has queered the pitch for BJP

The Congress election manifesto, released yesterday (26 March), has been quickly rubbished by the BJP as a “document of deceit”. This is a bit rich, for all manifestos - without exception - are “documents of deceit”. They are about presenting the voter with a sumptuous menu card, but without the right hand column - the price list. The regional parties have already presented their “documents of deceit”, and the BJP will surely present one deceitful enough to compete with the document presented by Rahul Gandhi and Sonia. (Read the full manifesto here, and critiques here and here). The Congress manifesto offers more promises than any government can reasonably hope to fulfil. It promises more rights and entitlements than any sane government should (homesteads, health), given the precarious fiscal situation. It claims more achievements than what squares with reality (high growth, but fairly jobless growth, a slowing economy with built-in inflation boosters, and a weak climate for economic optimism). However, once we get away from the deceitfulness, or otherwise, of the manifesto, the Rahul Gandhi vision cannot be clearer. The manifesto is beautifully crafted and forms a comprehensive political package that intellectually and philosophically presents a coherent and consistent Left-wing approach - with a few phrases thrown in about growth and business-friendliness. The manifesto would be entirely believable if offered by any party other than the Congress, which has been in power for 10 years and shown us what it can or cannot do. We know where these policies can lead - to slowdown and fiscal bankruptcy - and so may not work for the Congress itself this time. It would have worked quite well for, say, the Aam Aadmi Party, which is as yet relatively untainted by failure and scandal. [caption id=“attachment_1453071” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Rahul Gandhi and Manmohan Singh releasing the manifesto. PTI[/caption] However, that said, the manifesto offers a huge, huge challenge to the economic and political Right (read: the BJP) that has so far been unable to come up with a counter-narrative and ideology. The Congress manifesto’s Left tilt will be difficult to counter in a one-man-one-vote consumerist democracy where the wares offered are tantalisingly visible but the price tags are not. The Right can offer capitalism, free markets, fiscal discipline, higher growth and trickle-down economics as rewards for the poor, but these come later and are less visible to the voter. What we all can see, in 70 mm screens and with Dolby sound to boot, is that the rich will get richer first and inequalities will widen before the poor get any less poor. This is why the Congress did better in 2004, and this is what it is hoping will do the trick this time too. The BJP looks like a party for the haves, not the have-nots. To be sure, this explains the dilemmas facing all Right-wing parties anywhere, and especially in a country with a numerically large population of the poor or near poor. The Right, if it remains true to its ideological roots, can merely offer a path to better outcomes in future while the Left can offer a visible buffet to today’s hungry planet. The Right can offer economic virtue while the Left can offer instant vice. It is difficult to sell Right-wing fidelity and virtue if the Lefties next door have opened a raucous porn shop. Before an election, even a bankrupt Left-wing party can offer redistributive ideas that no one can oppose while the Right is left carping and nitpicking about some minor detail or the other in the Congress manifesto. So far, the Indian Right has found it difficult to come up with electorally attractive ideas that are also economically sound and constitute a viable and differentiated alternative. The Congress manifesto, with an extreme focus on rights, entitlements, freebies and sugar-coated goodies, will appeal for the simple reason that it offers everyone everything. The Right is stuck with offering the same things - but with a vague promise that it will be fiscally more faithful and celibate. If we look at the Right-wing stance in the recent past, this is exactly what happened. In the last one year, the Congress has pushed all its Left-wing legislation - food security, land bill, etc – even without a viable parliamentary majority. The BJP was left frothing at the mouth, offering irrelevant objections, and  unable to set the agenda. If Salman Khurshid’s evocative phrase - napunsak - has to be applied appropriately, it is to the situation where the BJP proved impotent to oppose even bad legislation. It was reduced to claiming that’s its version of these bills would have been even more generous - exactly the opposite of what its alleged Right-wing ideology would call for. The BJP even went along with the idea of reservations in promotions in the Lok Sabha and was saved from ignominy in the Rajya Sabha by the Congress’ inability - or unwillingness - to find the numbers. The BJP’s ideological dilemma suggests that in India there can be only Left-wing parties and Leftist politics. The difference is in the shade of red you espouse. We can start with the regional parties that are populist and moderately Left. We then have the Aam Aadmi Party to the Left of the regional parties, followed by the Congress (as evidenced by its manifesto) to the Left of AAP; then we have the traditional Left (CPM, etc), which are to the Left of the Congress; finally we have the various Maoist groups that are to the Left of the Left. If we have any more parties that want to go even further Left, they will surely fall off the map. The party left out in the cold is the BJP, which now has to pretend it is Lefter-than-thou to combat the Congress, even while throwing some right-of-centre lollipops to its core middle and upper class constituencies. In any other country the BJP would be considered a mildly confused centrist party whose heart is somewhat Right-wing, but the mind is pulling Left for electoral reasons. The only thing that distinguishes the economic ideology of the BJP from that of the rest of the Left is the expectation that in government it will indeed be deceitful: promise a Left moon while delivering a more Right-of-centre economic policy in practice. This is what Vajpayee did. After promising Gandhian socialism - whatever that means - he gave us moderate reforms, even deregulation and (wonders or wonders) some privatisation. He gave us a reforming fiscal balance, low inflation, more elbow room for private sector growth, and a vision of smaller government. If you notice what Modi has been saying on economic policy - he has actually been saying very little. Beyond promising “less government, more governance” his political speeches have talked more about the poor, the farmers, jobs, unemployment and inflation. Good things to talk about, but meaningless without a prescription or roadmap on how to get there. He has also been talking urban politics, but so have the others. The best one can hope for from a BJP manifesto is more of the same: deceitful, but hinting at something else. The big question to ask is: is there real scope for Right-wing economics in India? I hope to address this question in another article, hopefully once the BJP puts out its own document of deceit.