(Image Courtesy- taxindiaonline.com)

 

The bitter wordy duel between BJP & Congress over failures/difficulties in honouring political promises (PPs) is welcome. Welcome because it has turned focus on the Centre and States’ capacity to fund & sustain PPs, which have been marketed as guarantees in recent years. 

The politicians’ urge to market guarantees to the poor masses has enriched narrative with racy Hindi phrases such as ‘khata-khat’, ‘taka-tak’, ‘tana tan’, ‘safachat’ and ‘pat pata, pat.’

We need not delve into these Hindi phrases in this column as anyone can find on the Net which leader uttered such or similar words to either laud his/her party’s freebies or deride the ones promised by rival parties. 

This column would focus on hard facts on all guarantees including political guarantees (PGs) to enlighten the public about grave risks of reckless PGs over and above off-budget guarantees.

The tsunami of freebies might start a chain of knock-on impact. The effect might start with fiscal crisis resulting in sharp fall in foreign exchange reserves, alarming fall in value of local currency, runaway inflation & crisis of confidence in the country. 

(Cover Page of a Chargesheet by Jan Sangh, BJP's precursor)

 

Modi Government’s White Paper on UPA rule (2004-2014) & Congress’ counter Black Paper on governance (2014-2024) have enriched murky politics.

Both the documents mark a new high in political cacophony. Black-out of vital facts are a common feature of both the papers.  

Both papers have failed to connect each Union Budget with the next one to make sense of missed targets & achievements, unfulfilled or partly honoured promises.

Both papers have failed to cite crucial instances to lend credence to their respective contentions. Both have thus left voters groping in the dark about the truth on different shades of governance during the last 20 years.  

Consider first the White Paper. It has a familiar ring of BJP recalling Congress’ alleged misdeeds whenever it faces prickly questions on governance deficit. 

The White Paper makes one nostalgic about the BJP’s chargesheet on Congress-led UPA dated 4th April 2014. It had helped BJP sweep the 2014 Lok Sabha elections.

The Finance Minister, Nirmala Sitharaman, knows the crucial importance of the chargesheet as she was one of the six members of BJP committee that prepared it.

An average citizen thus expected the Government to connect the White Paper with BJP’s 2014 chargesheet titled ‘A Dark Decade in Governance’. Mute voter also expected the Government to explain the speed and scale of the delay in acting on BJP’s eight-page chargesheet captioned ‘Damad Shree - The Vadra Get-Rich Quick Model’.