The Hindu Business Line : Election planks

IN preparation for the election to the Lok Sabha, political parties must be working out the main thrusts of their campaign to woo the electorate. They must have realised that they cannot fool all the voters all the time and in all the elections. It must also be clear to them that the time when the voter can be swayed by hype or hoopla is long past. Parties must either deliver or be seen to deliver. Apart from the committed vote banks, loyal party cadres and the gullible who fall for the parties' blandishments, the rest of the electorate has been giving evidence of rising level of awareness and ability to weigh party planks with discernment.

It is good that in the coming election, the country is essentially called upon to choose between two alliances pitted against each other. The National Democratic Alliance (NDA), under the BJP umbrella, is banking on the magnetic hold of Mr A. B. Vajpayee over the minds of the general mass of the people, the so-called "feel good" factor and the demonstration of its staying power with a good record of governance.

The alliance centering round the Congress is hoping to exploit the anti-incumbency factor, the discontent among voters in the interior, rural areas over unemployment, want of basic amenities, grievances of farmers and the underprivileged and the continued sufferings of the people below the poverty line.

The NDA's biggest stumbling block will be smugness. It should remember that the feel-good factor is confined to the middle-class of around 250 million living in urban and semi-urban areas, accounting perhaps for 200 constituencies. Of these, at the most, it could hope to win 150. In the remaining 340 constituencies, the emergence of the anti-incumbency bias is very much a possibility, unless it gives convincing promise of better performance all round, if it comes to power again. Counting merely on Mr Vajpayee's charm, the glamour of globalisation or the overkill on Ms Sonia Gandhi's foreign origin will take the NDA nowhere. These are simply of little consequence to voters in rural areas or below the poverty line facing unbearable oppression in their quotidian lives.

Likewise, the Congress combine will be committing a serious blunder if it thinks it can score over the NDA by dangling the bogey of communalism or Gujarat riots. Nor can it be dismissive about the feel-good factor. There is certainly a "can-do" spirit suffusing the nation. Instead of pooh-poohing the distinct gains in the economic sphere of the past five years, its plank should be a meticulously crafted alternative strategy for development which will yield better and quicker results, avoiding the patent inequities of the present model.