In keeping with Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi's vision, Indians would have to remain prepared for more rhetoric and maximum suffering. This is the party manifesto's real and underlying message

The Congress manifesto may hit the common man hard. It is not only soft on inflation but has proposed measures that would make everything from electricity to education, dearer. The flexible labour laws and unleashing of corporate in the rural areas to create a virtual zamindari — the concept of the Special Economic Zones in a new garb — are likely to cause untold miseries. The poor, it seems, has taken the backseat in the Congress agenda.

Controlling corruption apparently is not a priority for the party. While releasing the manifesto, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said, “Corruption in a developing economy cannot be wished away”. Not surprisingly, the business community is not enthused. A survey done by the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry on business confidence, released a day after the manifesto was made public, indicated that the business community was disturbed at the current economic trend — dwindling profits, fall in jobs and demand, difficulty in credit availability, high interest rates and high cost of doing business. No corporate has supported caste-based reservation in private jobs and it includes Maruti Suzuki chairman RC Bhargava, Videocon chief Venugopal Dhoot and the Confederation of Indian Industry president Kris Gopalakrishnan.

If the Congress comes back to power, people should expect galloping inflation, as nothing would be available without ‘user charges’ — be it electricity, education or any other service.

In a radical shift, the manifesto promises “only the absolutely necessary subsidies to the absolutely deserving”. The party proposes ‘user charges’ for assured quality in public services, be it power, natural gas, lPG or train services. So, the train fares vying with air fare would become a reality for those who cannot even afford unreserved seats.

It only means the party wants to ensure that people are deprived of the bare necessities for the sake of ‘quality’, a right that every consumer or user has. The benefit would go to large companies, who now would have an alibi to harass consumers by offering poor services for fixed or lower tariff. The national highways are stark realities of it.

Each so-called ‘better’ service would have a higher premium. The suffering poor citizens seem to have only one goal — fill up the pockets of perpetrators of officially-sanctioned loot. It is a sure path to misgovernance. This possibly justifies the recent doubling of gas price from Krishna Godavari basin RIl gas, from $4.2 to $8.3 per mBtu.

The manifesto proposes upgrading the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan to Shreshta Shiksha Abhiyan. The underlying assumption appears to be that, having expanded the coverage of public services in the past 10 years, the Congress now wants to focus on their quality, for which it is not averse to charging users. So, the people would have to toil harder to get proper and not ‘better’ education in a country where jobs have become scarce, wages, except for the pampered Government employees, minimal. The age-old concept of vidyadan is being sacrificed at the altar of higher profits.

The number of students in debt has doubled in the last five years of UPA2. The outstanding is Rs8,297 core and the number of defaulters is rising as the degree-holders are not getting jobs.

The manifesto virtually calls for the withdrawal of the Union Government from all activities that would benefit the people. The responsibilities are proposed to be transferred to the State Governments. The importance of the big-budget ‘national flagship programmes’ of UPA1 and UPA2 has been reduced.

The Congress says it wants to pass on a greater share of the cost of implementing these programmes to the State Governments as they have the fiscal space to bear the expenditure. This, the manifesto says, will let the Union Government allocate more resources for its exclusive responsibilities such as defence and railways. It is a virtual admission of the poor economic health and revenue constraints the Government is suffering from. Is the manifesto a mere rhetoricIJ

The working class is likely to have the worst time as the manifesto wants to give freedom to the employers to fix wages, and hire and fire. The 15-point agenda for socio-economic and political transformation include initiatives like promoting flexible labour laws. It is in sharp contrast to the promise of creating “10 crore jobs by unleashing one trillion dollar corporate investment in the rural area”. It appears as if the rural people have no entrepreneurship and they could be subjected to becoming slaves of the big houses would own the vast hinterland.

The manifesto promises right to health, pension, housing and social security and also wants fiscal deficit contained. It is silent on funding the right-based programmes. Healthcare is likely to be tagged to higher charges, housing would have higher cost and social security would come for a price.

So, in keeping with Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi’s vision, Indians would have to remain prepared for more rhetoric and maximum suffering.