New Delhi: (Ashok Malik is a columnist and writer living in Delhi)Staring at the reader as he or she peruses the
BJP manifesto, almost as some invisible watermark, is that overwhelming word that defines the document's promise and describes
Narendra Modi's mandate, should he win one: jobs.
Whether it is in talking of India becoming "a global manufacturing hub", promising a Diamond Quadrilateral of high-speed bullet trains, urging the development of 100 new cities or proposing a significant port building programme that will mirror the export-led growth trajectory of the Asian Tigers and China - the underlying sentiment is jobs.
(BJP's 'Modi-festo' headlines economy, downplays Ram Mandir)Manufacturing will create jobs. Urbanisation will foster jobs in a country where 60 per cent of the GDP is already linked to the city. Infrastructure building will sustain jobs. The development of downstream or ancillary small and medium enterprises at the periphery of giant industrial facilities - whether petrochemical plants or automobile factories - will nourish jobs and entrepreneurship. In a nutshell, this is the dream Modi is selling the voter, especially the young voter.
(10 differences between Congress, BJP manifestos)
Admittedly, the Congress manifesto may have made some of the very commitments, albeit in different language. Why then does Modi's project stand apart?
There are three big differentiators. The first is the Congress' record over the past 10 years. When it talks of making India a manufacturing economy, it ignores that it purposefully helped India miss this bus in the past decade. Much of Rahul Gandhi's rhetoric and Sonia Gandhi's drawing-room socialism served to undermine hopes of an Indian manufacturing revolution.
Second, the Congress focused on symbolic policy change, Modi has turned attention to basics. He has spelt out a rigorous infrastructure programme, realising that nothing - not factories and not cities, not even Walmart's cold storages as and when they appear - will work without fixing electricity and energy sources, and fixing coal and mining.
Third, there is a certain ambition in Modi's narrative, in his manifesto and in earlier speeches - such as his January 19, 2014, address in Delhi, which anticipated some of the aspects of the manifesto. He has recommended an authoritative programme to link India to global supply chains - as a buyer, as a contributor, as a manufacturer.
As in Gujarat, he has embraced the idea of globalisation. The Congress is clearly uncomfortable with this world; no wonder its manifesto harks back to references to socialist countries and non-alignment.
Should he take office after May 16, what could be the potential pitfalls in Modi's way? Here again there are three points to note.
First, many of these initiatives would require collaboration and synergy between the Union government and individual state governments, overcoming political differences. The manifesto speaks of "Team India" and of the prime minister and chief ministers forming a harmonious alliance in a polity sensitive to federative impulses. This sounds nice on paper; achieving it is another matter.
Second, where is the money? The mammoth infrastructure plans that Modi has outlined cannot possibly be funded by a government that will inherit very limited resources. Neither can they be implemented by a state-run bureaucratic system that simply lacks the capacity. These will require private capital, Indian and international, and will need policy consistency and openness to external business that India hasn't demonstrated in frankly hundreds of years.
To achieve this, Modi will have to play not prime minister, but social engineer. Like Roosevelt, he will have to tell India it has "nothing to fear, but fear itself".
Finally, Modi is ready to propel change because he guesses - or bets - that Indian society is primed to grasp change. Is everybody in the BJP? Take the manifesto's criticism of FDI in multibrand retail. If India is to become part of global supply chains, can FDI in multibrand retail actually be kept out - whether as a buyer and exporter of Indian goods or as an importer and link to external produce?
(In muscular manifesto, BJP shuns global retailers)
The retail issue may seem a minor quibble in the context of a manifesto that is otherwise reasonably strong on the economy, but it is these backyard booby traps that could pose a third challenge to Modi. After all, if he pulls it off, it will not be just India that will be transformed, but the BJP too. The rest is detail.
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