The Bharatiya Janata Party’s election manifesto for 2019 devotes as much space to recounting the achievements of the incumbent government, as making promises to the electorate for the next five years. The underlying theme of the manifesto seems to be: “We’ve done a great job in the last five years and you must be quite happy with us. Vote for us and we’ll continue the good work.”

But a comparison of the party’s latest Sankalp Patra with the one it put out in 2014 highlights some areas where voters may appreciate a change in its approach.

Farmers

If reforms topped BJP’s to-do list on the economy in its 2014 manifesto, agriculture now appears to be its top priority. The party has reiterated its promise of doubling farm incomes by 2022. But there’s a shift in the methods it plans to employ.

In 2014, BJP reposed faith in the Minimum Support Price (MSP) mechanism, promising farmers a 50 per cent profit over their cost of production on each crop. It now seems to have shelved this idea in favour of direct cash transfers to bolster farm incomes.

In the recent budget, it rolled out the Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi Yojana to directly credit ₹6,000 a year into the accounts of farmers owning up to 2 hectares of land. The manifesto now promises to extend this scheme to all farmers. Small and marginal farmers will be offered pensions after the age of 60.

With the eNAM in place to aid price discovery on agri-produce, the party plans to create supplementary warehouse and transport infrastructure and investments in the Krishi Sinchai Yojana will continue. There are plans to encourage more Farmer Producer Organisations improve market access.

Given that the MSP regime has proved completely ineffectual at alleviating farm distress, the BJP’s policy shift away from MSPs to income support is welcome. But these cash transfers are likely to cost a packet. Taxpayers would have looked forward to reformist proposals to prune existing food, fertiliser or other subsidies, to fund these transfers.

The middle class

In 2014, the BJP made an all-out effort to woo the middle-class voter, by promising to rein in runaway inflation, improve delivery of public services, cut administrative red tape, do away with obsolete laws and generally remove the pain points in the aam aadmi’s dealings with officialdom. ‘Maximum governance with minimum government’ was its mantra.

This middle-class focus has been watered down in the 2019 manifesto. The party downplays ‘minimum government’ and turns its attention to delivering better public services. The manifesto promises to upgrade public transport, provide every family with a pucca house and better water management by taking up the river linking project, restoration of water bodies and piped water supply to every household by 2024. It plans to spruce up the Railways and double national highway length.

Ayushman Bharat will be supplemented by setting up 1.5 lakh health and wellness centres by 2022 (17,150 are now operational). On education, the plan is to aggressively add seats in government institutions.

Taxation gets a passing mention, with the manifesto saying that benefits of better compliance will be passed on to taxpayers through lower rates. But importantly, the 2014 promise of doing away with an adversarial tax regime doesn’t find mention and ‘good governance’ is now about simultaneous elections, bringing back black money and a corruption-free government.

One can see why the party has made this shift. Reining in inflation and executing public projects on a mission mode, be it the Swacch Bharat Mission, Jan Dhan Yojana or Awas Yojana, have been the big successes of the NDA.

But then, middle class India has had to deal with increasing government and judicial intervention in its daily life in the last five years. The regulatory flip-flops during the note ban, the insistence on Aadhaar enrolment for essential services and a heavy compliance burden under both income tax and GST have made interactions with the officialdom very vexing for the ordinary Indian. The aam aadmi would be looking forward to the BJP delivering on its minimum government promise in the next term.

Industry and MSMEs

The BJP’s 2014 manifesto on industry dwelt on regulatory reforms as the key means to transform India into a global manufacturing hub. It outlined plans to cut red tape, expedite single-window clearances and provide access to skilled labour. There were promises to enhance MSME competitiveness through international linkages, access to credit, supply chain efficiencies and R&D support.

In 2019 though, the manifesto seems to focus on improving India’s position in the World Bank’s Ease of Doing Business (EODB) rankings. It talks of minor tweaks in the Companies Act to ease compliance. Domestic industrialists complain that the improvements in the EODB metrics haven’t made for an easier regulatory environment at the ground level.

Even as there has been substantial liberalisation in FDI rules, the NDA term has seen domestic sector-specific regulators take an increasingly activist role to their constituents, whether it was SEBI’s diktats on mutual funds, the RBI’s attempts to make rate decisions for banks or the Centre’s own ill-advised attempts to change the ground rules for thriving e-commerce. With ambitious collection targets, the taxman continued to pepper businesses, including start-ups, with aggressive demands.

For domestic industry to regain its competitive mojo, the BJP may need to fix these issues and initiate deep-rooted reforms to reduce the high costs of land, labour and capital.

The funding problem

Finally, while making generous promises, the BJP, like it’s arch-rival Congress, hasn’t offered much detail in its manifesto on how it proposes to fund the largesse. The promise of a ₹25 lakh crore investment in agriculture and ₹100 lakh crore in infrastructure far exceed the size of India’s Union Budget (which raised about ₹18 lakh crore in revenues and spent ₹24 lakh crore in FY19). This suggests that a BJP government, if it returns to power, may continue to lean heavily on extra budgetary resources, a practise frowned upon by the CAG.

Promises to expand the coverage of the Kisan Samman Nidhi to all farmers, offer monthly pensions to small farmers and shopkeepers, on top of those promised to 40 crore unorganised sector workers, would entail massive recurring costs for the exchequer, which could derail fiscal math too.

Reining in government debt and getting the fiscal deficit back on track after UPA profligacy, has been one of the most sterling achievements of the NDA government in the last five years. One hopes that there’s no change of heart on this count.

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