Political parties will soon stop making glib promises. Promises are already coming with guaranteed implementation. Gone are the days when politicians took advantage of people’s forgetfulness or magnanimity of forgiveness and made promises that they knew could not be translated into reality.
Now, there is a change in political parties. They are adopting newer ways to attract people to their fold. Having been out of power in a number of states and losing every state that had once been its stronghold, the grand old party Congress embarked on a new way of making guaranteed electoral promises. That tweak yielded rich dividends in the recently held Karnataka Assembly elections.
Going by the situation elsewhere, parties that are bent on retaining power or wresting power have taken it upon themselves to make guaranteed promises to people in a number of ways to come to power. This includes the public declaration that the first signature of their cabinet would be on the file pertaining to certain promise.
Quick on the uptake, TDP chief Chandrababu Naidu has released the party manifesto well in advance to take advantage of the power of guarantees. As there will be Assembly elections in many states ahead of the Lok Sabha poll, almost all the political parties have jumped on the bandwagon individually or as a combine to rule people after the upcoming elections.
Amidst all this, the larger question is: Why people should be lured to be ruled? Why are they demanding guarantees in place of poll promises which do not have any ground to be relied upon or believed? The fact is crystal clear. Since the attainment of Independence, there have been many parties that have ruled at the Centre and in the states. Lakhs of crores of rupees have been spent in the name of ameliorating the conditions of poor people. Yet, nobody knows how far the economic conditions of the people have improved. For the most part of independent India, the Congress has ruled the nation and the condition of the people has remained the same. The rich became richer, and the poor went down further by any count or any standard. The reason for this horrifying fact is that political promises have remained mere promises with no one to question their implementation. Having been virtually wiped out politically, the grand old party has realized that merely making promises do not help it any longer. In order to face the formidable Bharatiya Janata Party, it needs something that is innovative and attractive. The Congress latched on to guaranteed promises and came out with flying colors in the Karnataka Assembly elections. Although the Congress won the poll with a massive majority, we cannot say for certain that its guaranteed promises did the trick. But undeniably it did help somewhat. The major factor for the victory of the party is that it changed as per the wishes of people. And the Bharat Jodo Yatra of Rahul and his disqualification as MP ensured the party victory in Karnataka, apart from guaranteed promises — a new political culture that is bound to influence people a lot more in the coming elections. In future implementation of guaranteed promises will act as the touchstone of parties just as CIBIL scores reflect an individual’s creditworthiness. If you lose your trustworthiness, you are bound to lose the confidence of people and therefore the chance to come to power.
In a way, guaranteed poll promises have heralded an era wherein people need not have to worry about their implementation. Now, it is for the political parties to prove their trustworthiness. In their competitive clamour to come to power, political parties adopt innovative ways to seek the confidence of the people. Had all the promises been implemented by the parties that came to power in the past, the conditions of people would have been very healthy and different. That all parties have failed to translate their poll promises into reality is an undeniable fact.
Indeed, it is a great realization for the parties, considering that have begun to think in a different way so as to redeem their lost glory. Whatever may be the reason for the turn of the situation, it is really good for the people of India that the parties have made themselves accountable for the promises they make by stamping them with guaranteed implementation.
The guarantees in turn will make the leaders aware of the financial burden of their promises. You cannot guarantee anything unless you have something solid to implement it. The latest woes of Karnataka in implementing its rice scheme Anna Bhagya is a case in point. The government there is moving heaven and earth to procure rice to implement one of its guaranteed poll promises. Unable to get the required quantity of rice, it has decided to distribute money to people instead. This is what is bound to happen if political parties do not think of the realities while making promises and that too without guarantees.
Gaining power is one thing and retaining the confidence of the people is another. The former sustains only when the latter is on solid ground. It is the ground realities that always matter. You cannot guarantee anything that you cannot afford. Karnataka’s experience is a lesson for other parties that are hell-bent on coming to power with a galore of poll promises with guarantees.
