Columns: Fifth Column

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India Today, May 31, 1999
May 31, 1999

FIFTH COLUMN
Get to Nitty Gritty

Instead of verbose manifestos let's have sharply focused plans.

By Tavleen Singh

Soon we will be inundated with the election manifestos of our various political parties. In turgid prose we will be treated to the usual banalities about the usual things. Those who have the courage to plough through these documents will discover our politicians are all deeply aware of the importance of such things as infrastructure, literacy, healthcare and so on. Then a government will come to power and these concerns will take so long to materialise into action that there will probably be another election before anything actually happens.

This has now become so familiar a pattern that election manifestos are almost not worth the paper they are printed on. In 1998, for instance, the BJP's manifesto proudly announced infrastructure was going to be a primary concern. What happened? In 13 months all we got were task forces, good intentions and dream highways. If Atal Bihari Vajpayee's government had really meant business it would have started work on a Delhi-Mumbai highway in its first month in power. Had this been done, Vajpayee would have been remembered for something more than the nuclear tests and his own stellar role in transforming the BJP from a votary of Hindutva into an acceptable political party.

If we want real change then our political parties must get beyond generalities and give us specific details of what they plan to do. When it comes to infrastructure this is crucial-unless we want to trundle into the 21st century as the country with the world's worst roads, telecommunications, airports, airlines and power supply.

It was improvement in these areas that transformed China and most of east Asia. This is something Indians are not fully aware of since most Indians cannot afford to travel abroad. If they could they would realise it was when infrastructure improved that economic prosperity really arrived.

That change can happen fast if there is political will as is evident from the fact that the Shiv Sena-BJP Government in Maharashtra has managed-despite its otherwise unsavoury reputation-to actually build the Mumbai-Pune highway. They deserve credit for this since this is another plan that has been mulled over by Maharashtra's rulers for more than 20 years.

We no longer have this kind of time. So the people employed to write those dreary election manifestos must be made to do their homework and let us know exactly when, for instance, we can expect India to have its first modern road. Even if our next government builds only one major highway it will bring so much change and prosperity to the areas covered that this will provide the impetus to go ahead with more. Ordinary people, those who do not fully comprehend the importance of these things, will demand change.

We have also been hearing, in every election manifesto since Independence, how important literacy is. But again all we have got are generalities. We need specifics. Will our next government decentralise control of village schools to the panchayats? Will there be a serious effort to make at least primary education compulsory? How much will it cost and where will the funds come from? Is there likely to be a special plan for the states where the problem is acute? What of higher education? Are there specific plans to privatise it before our universities decay and crumble into dust? These are the sort of questions that need answers.

Similarly with health and family welfare. Not one non-Congress government has made even the smallest effort to change the Congress idea of healthcare. That it is an idea that has not worked becomes clear as soon as you step out of our metropolitan cities and go to a hospital in a small town. In our big cities too state hospitals are in such bad way that even poorer Indians trust their lives with quacks and charlatans rather than government doctors. We need to know exactly what our future government plans to do about this?

It is also more than about time that we heard something about population control. Ever since Sanjay Gandhi made this an unmentionable subject through his amateur efforts during the Emergency, no political leader has dared mention the issue. The result is we will become the world's most populous country in the first decade of the next century. Most of our people will be poor, illiterate, unhealthy and probably unhoused. Can we afford this? Clearly no. So we need to know exactly how our parties plan to deal with the problem.

The odd thing is that when you wander about the villages of India during an election campaign and stop to ask ordinary voters what they want, they usually come up with the right things: schools, roads, electricity, drinking water and healthcare. It is probably because our political leaders do not quite know how they can provide these things that they divert our attention by talking about other things.

Usually, these other things take the form of mudslinging. So BJP leaders will tell us that we are in a mess because of 40 years of Congress rule and Congress leaders will tell us that it is entirely because of the past couple of years of coalition governments in Delhi that we remain undeveloped and poor.

Too much time has already been wasted on this sort of thing. It's more than time that we voted in a government that tells us exactly what it plans to do and in how much time. A beginning can be made by giving us shorter, more specific election manifestos.

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