Thursday 27 March 2014

Congress' hilarious document to hoodwink voters



The Pioneer writes

The Congress on Wednesday released a hilarious document which it calls its manifesto. Among the funnier mentions in the manifesto is the party's resolve to contain poverty and shape up the economy within 100 days of coming to power.

The Congress has assured that it would create 10 crore jobs through skill development in this period. If indeed such a miracle is possible, the party must inform the people why employment opportunities shrunk in the 10 years of its rule.

The party does not elaborate on the most crucial factor on which the creation of these jobs rests: A national skill development programme. Those schemes that exist, as we all know, look good on paper but have been shoddily implemented.

Moreover, since even half the number of jobs the manifesto promises cannot be generated without the economy coming out of the mess it is in, the Congress has to reveal what magic formula it has up its sleeve to revive the economy. The manifesto is silent on the details and merely harps on hopes that the country will become a manufacturing hub and that one trillion dollars of investment will flow into infrastructure development.

It has also promised special tax incentives to firms manufacturing IT hardware. All of this and more, it claims, will take the economy to the eight per cent GDP growth over the next three years.

Since nothing had stopped the Congress-led UPA regime in the past 10 years from taking similar initiatives to realise these dreams, one wonders if the fresh dose of promises is just a farce and a desperate attempt to mislead the people into giving the party another chance.

It is difficult to believe that a party under whose watch the country’s economic growth dipped from a high of eight per cent to rest at less than five per cent has the political will and the economic sense to encourage growth.

It is even more difficult to believe that it can be done in a mere 100 days, given that the party had years ago promised to curb price rise within 100 days of coming to power and proceeded to miserably fail in doing so. Not only have prices gone up by many times, inflation has broken the back of citizens. Inflation presently hovers at close to 10 per cent, with the Congress-led Government being repeatedly unable to rein it. Given its past record, nothing that the party claims in its manifesto on reviving the economy is believable.

The other funny assurance the manifesto has given is to appoint a ‘special envoy' to get back black money that Indians have stashed abroad. The Government the Congress leads has had for years the details of the account-holders of black money in tax havens abroad and of the banks where the funds have been parked, but it has done nothing to get the money back into the country. It presented a so-called white paper on the issue in Parliament which was nothing more than a whitewash. The Supreme Court has had to step in repeatedly on the matter and question the Government's inaction.

Not every promise the party has made in the manifesto is funny; some are downright worrisome. The manifesto hints at providing reservations for the weaker sections of society “without in any way affecting” the existing caste-based reservation. It means that the Congress wants to cast the quota regime net further, without bothering to conduct an appraisal of whether the present reservation policy has delivered the result it was supposed to. Although the manifesto does not say so explicitly, Congress leaders have begun to hint that their party is in favour of introducing reservations in employment in the private sector as well. It is evident that the Congress, which has been steadily losing its hold over the underprivileged sections of the voters over the years, is determined to woo them with promises that are ill-conceived.

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