After an embarrassing delay in releasing its election manifesto, Narendra Modi-led BJP finally came up with a document that clearly shows signs of a split political personality. While on the one hand, there are streaks of faux welfarism, there is also the definite stamp of the saffron camp’s hardline Hindutva ideology. The much-awaited document charts the usual waters, such as bolstering public distribution system, shoring up the economic graph, ensuring subsidised grains for farmers. These promises are hardly different from what the Congress manifesto has offered, and read like a rerun of the former, except for the strong emphasis on implementation and delivery of legislations. Questions of health and housing, women’s bank, ensuring execution of food security provision and a number of other issues sound decidedly similar to other party manifestos, and aren’t spectacular in any respect. However, what do come across as pleasant surprises include the suggestion to reinvigorate the Centre-State relationship by forming a separate body which will look at the matters of fund and resource allocation in detail, and wherein the hierarchical difference between the prime minister and chief ministers will be done away with. This halting move towards federalisation of the political economy is a welcome change, but, it must not be forgotten that the idea, despite its apparent novelty, is in direct contrast with Narendra Modi’s own authoritarian brand of functioning. Similarly, while promises of infrastructure building, setting up of super-specialty hospitals at par with AIIMS and urban development stare back from the 52-page document, there’s hardly any mention of bolstering of labour laws, and ensuring that the benefits stay on beyond the bubble of post-poll euphoria bursts in due time. Similarly, while BJP has stuck to its earlier stances, including refusing FDI in multibrand retail, abolition of non-performing assets and simplifying the tax structure, there are enough loopholes in these pledges to keep them from becoming realties in a timebound manner.
On the other hand, BJP manifesto’s overt Hindu rashtra-laced aggression, declarations of bringing about ‘modernisation of madrassas’, as well as bringing in a purported uniform civil code to ensure ‘gender equality’ when they have openly opposed decriminalisation of homosexuality and reading down of Section 377, tell a different tale. The message is that BJP intends to carry out a national integration project that borders on the coercive, without seeking voluntary nods from all the involved sections of the different minorities. The overt emphasis on Muslims, at the literal non-mention of others, bespeaks the biases which are in fact no longer hidden. While governance and clean administration are need of the hour, given a decade of untrammeled corruption and unending scams under the UPA regime, what we cannot ignore is the equal want of an egalitarian and liberal framework, which in principle and practice, would not discriminate
between fellow citizens.