4 min readMay 24, 2024 11:35 AM IST
First published on: May 24, 2024 at 07:15 AM IST
We are in the month of May. The year is 2034. Virat Kohli is the manager of the Indian cricket team. Shah Rukh Khan wins the Filmfare award for Lifetime Achievement. T-10 has become the most followed cricket league in the world. Elon Musk has sent a manned spacecraft called Musk X to Mars. Diljit Dosanjh wins a Grammy. Sam Altman is advocating suffrage for AI robots. Jhumpa Lahiri bags the Nobel Prize for Literature.
And I am now reading the BJP Election Manifesto 2034. What an impressive cover design. Outstanding layout. With tongue firmly in cheek, here are a few excerpts from the document, along with commentary.
Rs 15 lakh in every account: During the former Prime Minister’s first-ever Lok Sabha campaign in 2014, he had promised to deposit Rs 15 lakh into every citizen’s bank account. Two decades on, we are pleased to have finally delivered. Just 30 days after we are sworn in, the money will be transferred into your bank accounts. We must also acknowledge the linguistic contribution made by the former Home Minister at the time. He was the first person to use and popularise the term “jumla” (an unfulfilled promise). We are delighted that this five-letter word has received international recognition, and become the 6,00,001st addition to the Oxford English Dictionary.
Bullet train: You will recall, the first in the series was launched in 2030, a mere eight years behind schedule. Now that we have connected Mumbai to Ahmedabad, we commit ourselves to launching ten more bullet trains. Seven of these will be in Gujarat: Vadodara, Surat, Jamnagar, Bhavnagar, Rajkot, Bhuj and Vadnagar (the birthplace of former Prime Minister Narendra Damodardas Modi).
Double farmers’ income: The dignity and empowerment of farmers has always been one of our top priorities. In 2016, we, “the party with a difference”, made a commitment to double farmers’ income by 2022. However, because of certain “Nehruvian bottlenecks”, there was a timeline malfunction (in the language of ChatGPT, this means there was a monumental mess of deadlines). But “ache din” are only months away. Sorry, that was auto-correct. Please read as “achhe din”.
National Wax Museum: We propose the setting up of a National Wax Museum, and shall call it NaMom. One thousand life-sized wax (Hindi for wax is “mom”, pronounced “moam”) statues will feature in NaMom. These will include, among others, once-prominent television anchors who have since retired to a quiet life in Dehradun.
Implement women’s reservation: Among all our commitments, this is the easiest to make and roll out. This is our USP, where we use content created for earlier manifestos of our party and dutifully put them in the current manifesto. This makes us the only political party in the world which has a right-wing ideology, but has the generosity and diversity to blend a communist ideology into ours. We call this CPM — Copy Paste Method!
Demonetisation: Where were you on the evening of November 8, 2016? The historic televised speech at 8 pm was watched more than any saas-bahu serial in the history of Indian television! We are sure all of you remember the announcement made by the world’s most accomplished teleprompter orator. We have commemorated this great occasion with an acronym, GEL. Great Economic Learning. Since then, such a telecast has never been repeated — it won’t be for the next 100 years. As any life coach will tell you, the greatest learning is failure.
P.S. This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to any living person or event is merely coincidental. In the heat, dust and rhetoric of elections, let us remind each other not to take ourselves so seriously. Glad we pressed pause and had a good old-fashioned laugh.
The writer is MP and leader, All India Trinamool Congress Parliamentary Party (Rajya Sabha)
And I am now reading the BJP Election Manifesto 2034. What an impressive cover design. Outstanding layout. With tongue firmly in cheek, here are a few excerpts from the document, along with commentary.
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