The same policies with different names will not give different results.

Despite Prime Minister Narendra Modi's promise to make India Congress-mukt Bharat, or an India free of the Congress, the Congress party "has succeeded in making the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) a mirror image of itself", wrote Anantha Nageswaran. How? To win the state election in UP the BJP promised to forgive all loans to farmers, just what the Congress did in 2008, to win parliamentary elections in 2009. Banks in UP will take a hit of over Rs 274 billion. Does it help farmers? In the short term, yes, but in the long term a study by a World Bank Group concluded,"The waiver had sent a wrong message to prudent and diligent borrowers who repaid on time. Further, the study found that after the loan burden was relieved farmers did not really invest in productivity or technology, and their yield did not necessarily improve. Their conditions remained the same and they were as vulnerable to the next farming failure as before." The danger of a loan waiver in UP is that farmers in every state are demanding the same. The BJP led government in Maharashtra is refusing to waive loans for its farmers, focusing on other schemes to increase income and reduce costs. To get round the difficulty the central government proposes to lend Rs 100,000 to 85 million rural households, which means farmers and farm laborers. This is apparently to protect rural folk from local moneylenders with their extortionate rates of interest. Laudable intentions. Politicians know that, since there is no collateral, people will not repay, so it is basically a straightforward handout of Rs 8.5 trillion of taxpayer money. Also people borrow from moneylenders in an emergency, for an illness, a wedding or a death, for which this money will be totally inadequate. Indians are adept at changing classifications to get around rules, wrote Jessica Seddon. Thus, when the Supreme Court banned sale of alcohol within 500 meters of national highways, thousands of kilometers of highways were changed to "local, municipal or district roads" by state governments. Why do politicians want to forgive loans when banks are struggling with bad loans of around Rs 7 trillion? Because, to solve the problem of bad loans the banks maybe forced to write off loans of large companies, some which owe in excess of Rs 1 trillion. That would be political suicide unless the government makes it look as if it is to help the poor. The Finance Minister has cleverly tried to pass the responsibility of loan waivers to the state governments but transferring debt from the central government books to state governments is just financial jugglery. If fiscal deficits of states were to increase it will add to the national debt burden and states will curtail investment spending, which will decrease growth rate. In its eagerness to control the entire nation the BJP is imitating the Congress in other ways as well. We know it ended very badly for the Congress, so we shall see what happens to the BJP. Newton's third law comes to mind.