India's Congress Party pledges food for poor
Updated
India's ruling Congress party has released its manifesto for elections set to start from April for a month. The Congress party, which has ruled with the support of smaller parties, is promising the people continued economic growth. A key plank of its manifesto is a hugely-subsidised food scheme ... including guarantees that every poor family would get 25-kilograms of cheap rice each month.
Presenter: Sen Lam
Speaker: Professor Robin Jeffrey, Director of the School of Pacific & Asian Studies, Australian National University
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JEFFREY: I think it's being done because it seems to have been a winner in various states, where similar schemes in India have been introduced that's done well for the parties that have advocated them and introduced them. So it's working on a model and it's also expanding an existing scheme. There are already more than 100 million cardholders who receive subsidised rice. This is really just making it a little bit more affordable. It's reducing the price on this scheme. So it's not as innovative as it might sound, but it's also giving a new kick along to a tried and true programme.
LAM: Will it not be madly expensive though, given that millions of Indians live under the poverty line and therefore will qualify?
JEFFREY: It's a 100 million card holders, but they are already benefiting, so it's adding to something that already exists. So in a sense it's in the budget and it has been in previous budgets. It is simply elaborating on an existing scheme. And for electoral purposes, it is taking a scheme, extending it and re-badging it I guess in managerial terms. It's kind of relaunching something that is already there, with the idea that such schemes had played well in state elections and this is taking something that is already there and giving it another kind of polish up and a little bit of a makeover.
LAM: And Robin Jeffrey, you have just been in India, what do you make of the Congress party's chances of getting back in?
JEFFREY: I mean today and there is a long way to go, there is another what three or four weeks before voting starts. But today, you would have to say the Congress looks like emerging as the largest single group in the 540 seat parliament. But that largeness is probably not going to be much more than 160 seats out of 540, but it will be bigger than any other constellation, that would be the way you would call it today. But as I say, there is a long way to go and there are an awful lot of players in this particular chess game.
LAM: Indeed, and what about the smaller parties? Do you think they will stay the course and continue to support Congress?
JEFFREY: Well, there is no telling where they will go, and we have been playing this game among friends in India for the last couple of weeks while I have been there, enumerating the number of people who could reasonably aspire to be prime minister when the dust is settled in six weeks time. And there are probably a dozen or more candidates who could credibly say well, mm, I could be prime minister at the end of May, because India has had some unlikely prime ministers in the last 15-16 years.
LAM: Indeed, what about the youth vote Professor Jeffrey? The Congress President Sonia Gandhi, I notice, has again lent her support for Manmohan Singh, who of course is well into his 70s. Does Congress not have any younger talent in the party, to take the place of the old guard?
JEFFREY: Of course they are projected Rahul Gandhi, Sonia's son. He's appearing on billboards now, there are billboards around Delhi that have come up with only him on them, not the kind of Holy Trinity at the moment, which is his mother, him and Manmohan Singh, but there are billboards coming up with only him. And I mean, he is obviously the chap that will be projected and he's a young guy, he's only in his late 30s. So that's an attempt to cash in on India's so-called demographic dividend, you know, the fact that India has a very young population at the moment.
LAM: And of course, Rahul also comes from a very good brand, does he not from the Gandhi dynasty as such?
JEFFREY: That's right, and of course people are speculating on how badly he really wants the job, whether in fact, he has the commitment, the will and also the experience to carry it out.
LAM: But at the end of the day, it's the votes that counts. Do you think that might do the trick with the younger voters?
JEFFREY: Hard to know. I don't get a sense of any great enthusiasm for him, certainly not amongst the middle class people I was talking to. I mean people would say nice chap, perhaps, but no sense that he has the kind of passion and fire that's going to create a great personal following\
