A poster of India’s ruling Congress party vice president Rahul Gandhi is seen in print as part of the party’s election campaign material in Mumbai, India, Wednesday, March 26, 2013. India’s struggling Congress party appealed to its main constituency of poor voters in an election manifesto unveiled Wednesday that promises new jobs and more funding for education and health care. The country’s 814 million eligible voters head to the polls starting April 7. (AP Photo)
NEW DELHI, March 26 (Reuters): India’s ruling Congress party, facing a likely general election defeat, defended its economic track record over a decade in power and sought to woo voters with offers of further costly welfare measures. The party, controlled by the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty and its scion Rahul Gandhi, is expected to lose due to public anger over graft scandals, high inflation and an economy growing at its slowest pace in a decade.
Unveiling its election manifesto on Wednesday, the party said it would lift 800 million people - almost as many as have the right to vote - into the middle class and raise gross domestic product (GDP) growth to 8 percent within three years. Appealing to its core constituency of poorer voters with a call for inclusive growth, Congress proposed new rights to include guaranteed access to health, pensions, housing and even “to entrepreneurship”.
“Growth by itself is not sufficient,” Prime Minister Manmohan Singh told an event at which Congress president Sonia Gandhi made a rare public appearance in support of son Rahul’s leadership of the party’s flagging campaign. The 50-page policy document was long on policies to redistribute wealth with fewer proposals on how to generate it, reflecting a left-leaning heritage that predates independence in 1947. The nationalist opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which opinion polls show winning the most seats in the election starting on April 7, is expected to unveil a more pro-business manifesto next week, party sources said.
FISCAL BURDEN
The Congress proposals risk further straining public finances, already under duress due to weak tax receipts and high public spending. Already, party programmes like guaranteed paid work and subsidised grain for 67 percent of India’s population cost about 1 percent of GDP. The party contends that these have helped pull 138 million people - more than the combined population of Britain, Spain and Australia - out of poverty on its watch.
The manifesto “suggests that the focus will be on getting the economy back on track”, Nomura economists Sonal Varma and Aman Mohunta said in a research note. “However, the entitlement-based policies will continue and will be widened to cover housing and health, which will entail a higher fiscal cost,” they said, adding that farm subsidies would be inflationary.
Modi assures people of
prosperity, development
Bulandshahr, March 26 (IANS): BJP’s prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi Wednesday urged people to remove the “corrupt Congress” and vote for his party, assuring them of prosperity, development and a bright future. “You give us 60 months and we will give you an India of your dreams,” he told a large gathering in Bulandshahr of western Uttar Pradesh.
Addressing his first ‘Bharat Vijay’ rally in Uttar Pradesh, the Gujarat chief minister targeted the Congress and accused it of price rise, inflation, bad governance and rising unemployment in the country. Alleging the opposition parties were rattled at the growing acceptance of the BJP across the country, Modi said such parties were now chanting the “secularism raga” to stop him.
“Whenever I say let us talk about development and other serious issues, these parties say first discuss secularism,” he said while taking a jibe at the Congress plank of secularism.
Talking about the Sachar Committee report and various other minority-oriented schemes funded by the union government, the BJP leader said all that the Congress has done for minorities was to fool them with false promises.
In a move aimed at touching a raw nerve of sugarcane growers in the region, Modi said many sugar mills were running in his state too but no arrears were pending and farmers were happy and prosperous there. “This area was known as the sugar bowl once and now the area has become bitter for farmers here,” he said in a reference to pending arrears running into several hundred crore rupees.
