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According to both supporters and rivals, the Congress’ success in the recent elections has been largely due to pro-people policies like the NREGS, RTI and the farmer loan waiver scheme
The Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) has brushed aside all challenges and emerged victorious in India’s 15th Lok Sabha polls, the results of which were out on May 16. Manmohan Singh became only the second Indian prime minister after Jawaharlal Nehru, in 1962, to return to office after serving a full five-year term. The alliance won 261 seats, only a dozen seats short of the half-way mark of 272 in the 545-member Lok Sabha. The Congress’ success was acknowledged by its allies, even its rivals who said the party had won because of its welfare policies. Analysing the electoral surge, Nationalist Congress Party chief and Union agriculture minister Sharad Pawar said the farm loan waiver had helped the UPA’s return to power. Senior journalist and opposition BJP member Chandan Mitra said the NREGA (National Rural Employment Guarantee Act) was a major factor in the UPA’s win. “It is a government that is reaping the benefits of the NREGA; it is reaping the benefits of the loan waiver scheme; it is reaping the benefits of other aspects of decisive government…,” National Conference president and Jammu and Kashmir chief minister Omar Abdullah said. Dravida Munnettra Kazhagam (DMK) leader and former Union minister for communications and information technology Dayanidhi Maran agreed: “The NREGA programme of the central government was a big hit, and Tamil Nadu implemented it…” Meanwhile the Congress, buoyed by having won 204 seats on its own, an improvement of 59 seats over its 2004 tally, is planning to continue its people’s welfare policies. Though pro-industry sections believe that the new political stability will make India a more attractive investment destination, as Singh, 76, seeks the funds to stimulate Asia’s third largest economy, the Congress Party is keenly aware that a third of India’s 1.1 billion people live in extreme poverty and more than 90% work in the informal, unorganised sector. Congress’ trade and industry minister Kamal Nath said in an interview last week, that the government would continue its focus on “stimulating the rural economy” as a means of spurring growth. Last June, as farmer suicides averaged three a day in eastern Maharashtra’s cotton belt of Vidarbha, over three crore letters signed ‘Manmohan Singh’ went out to farmers across India’s villages. Each letter read: “My Farmer Friend… Farmers are our economy’s lifeline… the government is aware of your contribution… amidst hardship…” The page-long letter by the prime minister went on to welcome the farmer back into the formal credit system by saying that the government was wiping off his outstanding debt. The Rs 65,000 crore move -- the biggest loan waiver in India’s history -- was read by cynics as a populist bid to woo the rural Indian voter in the year before the United Progressive Alliance government faced elections. Whatever, it appears to have worked for the Congress. Likewise, the NREGA rural jobs scheme -- the world’s largest social security programme in terms of the people it covered and the money spent on it -- was necessitated by the urban-rural divide, perceived to have widened in the opening years of the decade. The National Statistical Sample Organisation’s 55th Round showed that employment had grown at an abysmal 0.67% in the countryside, a third of the rate of population growth. Indeed, the National Democratic Alliance’s (NDA) defeat in 2004 was interpreted as a vote against its ‘India Shining’ campaign that attempted to show the country well on the path to success. This created the political impetus for the UPA government to pay more attention to social sector spending and direct benefits to the marginalised, its stated focus being the ‘Aam Aadmi’ (Common Man). The government redistributed wealth generated from 8% growth in the economy through 2005 to 2008 to greater outlays for rural development (up from Rs 29,894 crore in the NDA regime, to Rs 84,598 crore in the UPA regime), agriculture (up from Rs 16,439 crore in the NDA regime, to Rs 36,716 crore under the UPA), education (up from Rs 28,024 crore to Rs 96,541 crore) and health (doubled from Rs 24,162 crore to Rs 51,124 crore). Sustained economic growth and increased tax revenues ensured that social sector spending could increase from about Rs 36,000 crore in the last year of the NDA government to over Rs 120,000 crore in the UPA’s last year. In the past it has been the coalition partners that have moderated the Congress’ liberal economic policies and pushed the party towards such policies as the NREGA, compelling it to retain a more regulated and controlled economy. Indeed, the Congress leadership is aware that these moderating influences have not only worked to India’s advantage, sheltering the economy from the effects of the global meltdown, they have also helped the Congress win the support of the electorate. In its manifesto for the 15th Lok Sabha elections, the Congress pledged that if voted to power it would enact a Right to Food law along the lines of the NREGA. The law will guarantee access to sufficient food for all people, particularly the most vulnerable sections of society. It also promises that subsidised community kitchens will be set up in all cities for homeless people and migrants, with the support of the central government. “The Indian National Congress pledges that every family living below the poverty line either in rural or urban areas will be entitled, by law, to 25 kg of rice or wheat per month at Rs 3 per kg,” says the manifesto. Source: The Indian Express, May 18, 2009
Hindustan Times, May 18, 2009
Press Trust of India, May 18, 2009
http://ibnlive.in.com, May 18, 2009
Associated Press, May 18, 2009
http://www.livemint.com, May 2009
http://www.bloomberg.com, May 2009
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