Ignoring rural distress, jobs hurt BJP: Experts

Two major issues that impacted the incumbent were rural distress and its perceived attack on the Constitution, said Himanshu, Associate Professor of Economics at Centre for Study of Regional Development, Jawaharlal Nehru University.

“Ignoring rural distress has come to bite the BJP. Just giving out freebies was not enough when the economy is not doing well,” Himanshu said.

He said that while the Opposition highlighted inflation, rural distress and unemployment, there was also the undercurrent of the ruling party’s perceived attack on the Constitution.

“The real bread-and-butter issues are important, the incoming government need to focus on them…ultimately economic issues are what need to be addressed,” he added.

India’s GDP (gross domestic product) is estimated to grow at 8.2% in FY25. The country is already the fastest-growing large economy.

However, inflation, rural distress and unemployment weigh heavily on the Indian economy.

During April, retail inflation eased slightly to 4.83%, down from 4.85% in March, mainly due to falling fuel prices. However, food inflation remained elevated.

Rural distress, mainly due to erratic rains, and rising unemployment have also hurt citizens.

“The construction of the Ram temple hasn’t yielded any positive results for the BJP. The party should work more on people-centric measures and welfare activities rather than religion-centric activities. They concentrated more on the development of infrastructure but welfare measures are important,” said S Janakarajan, Professor of Economics at the Madras Institute of Development Studies.

“Welfare measures in the Congress manifesto made an impact. Its manifesto, which addressed many issues, was completely people-centric,” he added.

The manifesto, titled ‘Nyay Patra’, promised jobs, development of infrastructure, higher minimum support prices (MSP) for farmers, universal free healthcare and a national caste census.

The highlights of the BJP manifesto included the continuation of the free ration scheme for the next five years, delivering clean drinking water, providing free electricity to the poor, synchronized general and assembly elections, and building bullet train corridors.

Equally, some experts argued that the manifestos didn’t really have an impact on the election results.

Scaling up schemes

N.R. Bhanumurthy, vice chancellor of Dr BR Ambedkar School of Economics University, Bengaluru, said the BJP has scaled up many welfare schemes, some of which were a continuation of the earlier Congress-led government’s policies.

“It is more of the government’s performance of the last five years. Except for a few misses, the BJP government has scaled up many welfare schemes, some continuation from the previous government, which include providing drinking water, housing, gas connections, toilets, and roads,” said Bhanumurthy.

“Going ahead, one can expect continuity (of the ongoing policies), and more focus on welfare measures. However, we need to be careful of freebies and focus more on employment opportunities. There is also an issue of inequality, which needs to be addressed,” he added.

On Tuesday evening, before the completion of the counting, the BJP’s tally stood at 239 seats and the Congress was at 99 seats. Both the ruling and the opposition coalition have crossed the 200-mark. However, no single party had managed to reach the majority figure of 272.

The BJP had got 303 seats in 2019, and 353 in alliance . The Congress won 52 seats, while the coalition led by it, the United Progressive Alliance (UPA), bagged 91 seats.