Political parties taking their election manifesto seriously and implementing it is vital for fostering development. Manifesto is a publication issued by a political party before the election, reflecting its ideology and offering a set of policies it would wish to implement if elected to office. Political parties across the world are defaulting on their promises once they are in power. In India, most of the parties default on their pre-poll promises. Their apathy is so glaring that people are no longer expecting the parties to take their manifesto promises seriously. This article examines the conditions in which political parties take their manifestos seriously and the results they can get out of such allegiance.
Manifestos in Indian politics
The initial four decades of Indian politics had a heavy emphasis on the Nehruvian socialist model of nation-building. Industries, agriculture and planning received the prime focus in election manifestos. As the Congress system started weakening after 1967 and the grand old party had to compete with other parties, Indira Gandhi came up with the ‘Garibi Hatao’ slogan in the 1971 election. This slogan strongly resonated with the people and secured an overwhelming majority for her. In the post-Emergency 1977 elections, the Janata Party successfully rallied the country against the despotic rule of Indira Gandhi with its ‘Save Democracy’ slogan and got a sweeping majority. Gradually by post-1990s, the parties started focusing mostly on economic liberalisation in their manifestos, with welfarism taking a back seat. However, post-2000, a lot of parties made the manifestos a galore of freebies to lure the voters without any context or purpose. Most parties would forget their promises once they were in power, as those promises were made with the sole purpose of winning the elections.
Why manifestos are not taken seriously?
Most of the parties want to win the elections at any cost and luring people with an enticing manifesto is a part of that game. For instance, the Telugu Desam Party won the 2014 Andhra Pradesh Assembly elections by cheating the people with more than 600 promises. However, after coming into power, the party has not fulfilled even a single promise to its full extent. There seems to be two reasons for such an open apathy of the political parties. First, the parties take the public memory for granted and they think they can come up with more tempting promises for the next election campaign. The second is the lack of robust institutional mechanisms that hold parties accountable for default on their manifesto promises.
What makes parties take their manifestos seriously
Commitment towards their promises is the only factor that makes the parties take their manifestos seriously. A case in point is the way the Yuvajana Sramika Rythu Congress Party (YSRCP) has fulfilled its 2019 election manifesto under the able stewardship of YS Jagan Mohan Reddy. This two-page manifesto titled Navaratnalu (Nine Gems), a set of development and welfare schemes, was born out of Jagan Mohan Reddy’s 3,648-km padayatra. Navaratnalu mostly works towards meeting the 17 Sustainable Development Goals, which emphasise social empowerment and inclusive growth. In the last four-and-a-half years, the YSRC government has fulfilled 128 promises with 99.50% fulfilment rate. The only promise it could not fulfil is achieving the Special Category Status for the State. Even a difficult promise like restoring the Old Pension Scheme (OPS) is almost fulfilled with the introduction of the Guaranteed Pension Scheme (GPS).
Jagan Mohan Reddy’s work in the areas of education, women empowerment, agriculture, health care and local governance is unparalleled. His government has so far spent about `71,017 crore on education with the aim to make the State an education and skilling hub and to enable students to be globally competitive. The government has rebuilt thousands of schools as part of the Nadu-Nedu programme to ensure basic amenities. To encourage mothers to send their children to school, in its endeavour to achieve a 100% gross enrolment ratio, the government is giving `15,000 to each mother under the Amma Vodi scheme. It introduced English medium in government schools against all odds. Digital education has become the order of the day in all government schools in AP.
In healthcare, as part of the Nadu-Nedu scheme, the amenities were improved in thousands of hospitals. The universal health insurance scheme Dr YSR Aarogyasri covers 3,257 treatments and procedures, where the expenditure is more than `1,000. In the undivided AP, tertiary healthcare developed mostly in Hyderabad, and the separated State lacks good hospitals.
In this context, preventive healthcare assumed increasing importance. To strengthen this, the YSRCP government has introduced a unique concept of ‘family doctor’, in which every village secretariat gets a dedicated doctor. As a permanent solution, the government is establishing 17 new medical colleges to take care of the availability of qualified doctors and also to improve the tertiary and super-specialty treatments.
To realise the vision of Grama Swarajya of Mahatma Gandhi, the local governance and service delivery systems were strengthened in the State in an unprecedented manner. Today, people get most of the services delivered at their doorstep from more than 15,004 village and ward secretariats. These units have about 3.9 lakh secretariat staff and volunteers working and offer more than 540 services to the people thus bringing much ease in living. Every 50 households are handheld by a volunteer with respect to human development parameters. They no longer have to visit mandal and district headquarters many times, expending their time and money. This system has literally brought corruption-free governance to the doorstep of the people.
Taking manifesto seriously is good business
Due to such commitment and focus on manifesto implementation, the Jagan Mohan Reddy government could improve several human development parameters and turn the State into an important investment destination. The government has so far spent `2,58,497 crore on women empowerment, `96,064 crore on social welfare, `1,75,241 crore on agriculture, `71,017 crore on education, this expenditure is inclusive of the direct transfer to beneficiaries. Only through the DBT, the government has transferred `2,43,058 crore to the beneficiaries in saturation mode with utmost transparency, resulting in an enhanced pace in sustainable growth. This care was appreciated by Niti Aayog and the World Bank. As per Niti Aayog’s National Multidimensional Poverty Index 2023, AP fared much better than its rich neighbours Karnataka and Telangana in poverty reduction.
The State has topped the Ease of Doing Business Index for the last three consecutive years. By the end of the 2022-23 financial year (three years), the State has attracted investments of more than `2.5 lakh crore, which is no easy achievement under the given circumstances. The State has recorded 16% Gross State Domestic Product (GSDP) growth rate. All these achievements despite the unprecedented Covid-19 pandemic are a real testimony to the commitment, farsighted and focused approach of the YSRCP government. This commitment of Jagan Mohan Reddy in empowering the people started paying dividends as can be seen in the improvement in the standards of living of the poor families. Today the people of the State firmly stand with the YSRCP government while contributing their bit to the State’s sustainable development.
(Opinions expressed are that of the author)
P Krishna Mohan Reddy
OSD to Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh