A Call To The Faithful

capital than the post-1991 Congress and United Front regimes have been.

In its essence, the BJP manifesto is highly focussed. It maintains, throughout, the key elements of the partys current worldview: the specific recognition of the economic class which forms its backbone through the promise to set up a development bank Bhagedari bank to cater solely to the needs of the unincorporated sector, protection for Indian industry for seven to 10 years wherever it can perform or has the promise to perform, and a sometimes monotonous and uninformed appeal to nationalism of every sort cultural, economic and even military. The last, especially, disregards the realities of the international situation today. To talk of taking India nuclear is not even bravado. It is plain foolishness.

 

So, while the document may not score very highly from the point of view of strict consistency, especially of the economic sort, it nevertheless wholly succeeds in capturing the partys approach to policy. True, implementing most of these promises will be well-nigh impossible as, for instance, increasing the outlay for agriculture and rural development to 60 per cent from 34 per cent now or inducting nuclear weapons or not abiding by the obligations that India has already entered into under the WTO. But then, election manifestos are not only about fulfillable promises. They also to serve to indicate a partys mind and soul.

How much of the partys approach to economic issues makes sense? Not a great deal, unfortunately, because while it is one thing to appeal to sectional interests, it is another thing altogether to put together a policy which will hang together in the way that Dr Manmohan Singh did. This impression of internal inconsistency is enhanced by the fact that the manifesto is silent on most specifics of reform, except when it comes to protectionism. To take just one example, insurance reform is high on the national agenda and the manifesto recognises this by saying that it will foster competition. But it does not say whether it will allow foreign insurance companies as well. Likewise, the manifesto says that it will give preference to Indian companies in the infrastructure sector. But how many of them have the money, technology and managerial skills that are required to meet national needs?

On the whole, therefore, as reforms go the manifesto does not inspire much confidence because, in this day and age, reform must include a greater role for the foreigner. To keep him out, even if on a regionally selective basis, may be politically attractive. But economically it is nonsense. But so mired is the BJP in its old-fashioned view of economic nationalism that it fails to devise a newer, more self-confident version of it.