Seeing double

Will the scriptwriter of the Congress and National Democratic Alliance manifestos please stand up? Because there seems very little doubt that it is the very same person who has, with a dictionary of political-correct verbiage, perpetrated the damage in both instances. Sometimes it is a case of recycling old nostrums. So the Congress is content to dip into the past and come up with its 8220;rajniti to lokniti8221; or power-to-the-people theme, while the BJP8217;s old obsession with alliteration and repetition gets dangerously manifest in the NDA8217;s promise to free the nation from bookh, bhay aur bhrastachar hunger, fear and corruption. No one, of course, expects either group to live up to these promises but they must at least take the effort to look for new formulations to match old intentions, and find new intentions for old formulations.

This tendency to see double signifies conclusively that the centre of gravity of Indian politics has shifted to the right of centre, with the Congress jettisoning some ofits old socialist rhetoric and the BJP, its pet themes of the Ram Mandir, Article 370 and a Uniform Code in order to be more acceptable to their political allies within the NDA. Since Kargil has become something of a talisman in these elections, both parties solemnly swear to protect the country8217;s borders. The Congress, not surprisingly, takes a potshot at the BJP government for having failed to detect the Pakistani intrusions and the NDA returns the compliment by blaming past Congress governments for neglecting to secure the country8217;s borders. Both groups promise to observe fiscal discipline and further the liberalisation process, with the NDA making a perfunctory gesture to its anti-reforms lobby by promising a 8220;swadeshi touch8221; to the entire process. Farmers, as a votebank, have been consciously wooed by both groups, with the Congress vowing to increase investment in agriculture and promote a viable crop insurance scheme and the NDA promising higher Plan spending on agriculture and, you guessed it, aviable crop insurance scheme. Both groups also make their usual genuflection in the direction of the benighted Women8217;s Reservations Bill, which has been hanging fire since 1996.

While both documents positively bristle with concepts like gender justice, decentralisation and transparency, they also contain suggestions which do not augur well for Indian democracy. The Congress8217; promise to set up a commission to examine the issue of representation of minorities in government and public services smacks of a disturbing populism. If this means reservations of jobs, then it is important to state here that such a measure is meant to address injustices meted out to socially disadvantaged communities. Therefore, while minorities belonging to the lower castes must benefit from reservations, a general religion-based quota system is not warranted. Similarly, the BJP has managed to smuggle in an old preoccupation with the Constitution into the NDA manifesto. There is a promise here to appoint a Commission to review theConstitution. Even more disturbing, the NDA states that if voted to power it would ensure that measures would be taken to bring about fixed five-year term for all elected bodies. This is being done to ensure political stability presumably. If such stability is gained at the expense of the democratic functioning of the government, it could be a case of the remedy proving worse than the disease. Finally, the NDA8217;s promise to provide a legally-sanctioned eligibility criteria that prohibits foreign-born Indian citizens from holding high office seems a desperate and undemocratic move to checkmate one particular individual in the Opposition.