Focus on poor, promise of delivery: What Congress manifesto says

Releasing the manifesto, Congress president Rahul Gandhi underlined that his party’s governments had delivered on the promise of farm loan waivers in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh soon after winning the Assembly elections last December.

READ | ‘I’ve never broken a promise’, says Rahul Gandhi

The announcement regarding the minimum income guarantee plan for the poorest 20 per cent households of the country and the separate budget exercise for farmers in the manifesto signalled the Congress’s intent to stick to a narrative that is focussed on the poor, the farmers, and the country’s massive joblessness problem despite the BJP leadership’s attempt to steer the election discourse towards popular nationalism and stability.

However, aware that welfare expenditures being promised in the manifesto may generate apprehensions among markets and industry, Congress claimed that the document sought to marry “wealth and welfare”.