In what reads more like a ‘vision 2050’ document, the Aam Aadmi Party’s national manifesto promises to make India corruption-free by bringing in a Jan Lokpal Bill and decentralising political power to establish ‘swaraj’ or self rule.
Lashing out at the ‘crony capitalism’ practised by the BJP and the Congress, AAP national convenor Arvind Kejriwal, who released the party’s manifesto here on Thursday, clarified that AAP was not against capitalism.
“We are pro-private industry and business. The country cannot grow without private enterprise, and jobs cannot be created without them. So, doing business has to be made easier,” he said, adding that business and industry need to have minimal government intervention to grow.
Taking a dig at the ‘Governance Messiah (Narendra Modi)’, he said: “In Gujarat, no job can be done without paying a bribe.”
AAP, which has fielded over 400 candidates in the Lok Sabha polls to date, pledged to bring back black money. It promised “time-bound and stringent action against those found guilty of stashing black money; curtailing the use of black money in real estate and property dealings; a simpler tax structure and stringent recovery rather than amnesty schemes for evaders”.
Asked about FDI in retail and promotion of nuclear power, Kejriwal made it clear that the AAP was in principle opposed to both. A leading anti-nuclear power activist from Kudankulam is an AAP candidate in Tamil Nadu.
On agriculture, Kejriwal promised to implement the MS Swaminathan report, a minimum support price for crops that was 50 per cent higher than farmers’ real input costs and construction of cold-storage chains across the country “without Walmart’s help”.