Will the manifesto make any difference?

Yesterday the Congress Party released its manifesto for the general election starting in about a week's time. It is a 55 page document full of populist promises, such as a handout of Rs 72,000 to 20% of the poorest households, increasing expenditure on education to 6% of GDP, increasing spending on healthcare to 3% of GDP and making it a right, reserving 33% of seats in the Lok Sabha, in legislative assemblies in the states and in government jobs for women, ensure 3.4 million jobs in the public sector in addition to filling 400,000 vacancies in central government jobs and increasing expenditure on defence. How it will finance all these expenses when it also promises a single moderate rate for GST is a mystery. There are some good bits, such as reform of electoral funding by replacing electoral bonds, which allow complete anonymity of the donor, thus increasing ease of corruption, with a national election fund. The government has argued that electoral bonds enhance transparency, while increasing privacy of the donor, wrote Bhattacharya and Rakhecha. The manifesto also promises to restrict the pernicious Aadhaar Act, which allots a number to every citizen based on photographs, prints of all 10 fingers and iris scans, to only those receiving subsidies. It does not say whether those of us who do not receive any help from the state can ask for our biometric information to be deleted from the database. The Congress says that it has consulted renowned economists, such as Raghuram Rajan, Thomas Piketty, Lucas Chancel and Abhijit Banerjee before announcing its massive spending plans, but Prof Banerjee said that it will be impossible without raising taxes. "The economy is not viable without increasing taxes," he said. "We haven't really confronted that especially given that we have stopped the inflation tax." Inflation decreases government debt by increasing tax revenues while reducing the value of the currency. The Congress used this trick to finance its handouts the last time it formed the government and was reduced to an insulting 44 seats in 2014, compared to 415 in 1984. The BJP is totally dependent on the popularity of Prime Minister Narendra Modi but BJP governments were thrown out in recent assembly elections in 3 states, despite extensive campaigning by Modi. It releases its manifesto very close to the election, presumably to prevent much discussion on it. Apparently, there is an element of panic in the BJP regarding the election. Modi has tried everything, from handouts to suppressing economic data to filling institutions with people who will do his bidding, like the Kirchners did in Argentina, wrote Prof V Dahejia. Modi has been hammering his strongman image, following the air strike on a Jaish e-Mohammed training camp at Balakot in Pakistan, but the Pakistani establishment believes that the air strike had no effect or may even have helped to make it more popular, wrote A Siddiqa. The result of the election could be surprising.