Promise, reality: Cong manifesto backs freedom, but spending plan worrying

Party unequivocally backs individual freedoms, but its commitment to increase government expenditure on key areas will be hard to implement, writes T N Ninan

Two broad points should be made about the Congress election manifesto, released earlier this week. First is the commitment to increase government expenditure in many ways: Double general government expenditure on health to 3 per cent of GDP, double expenditure on education to 6 per cent of GDP, spend close to 2 per cent of GDP on the Nyuntam Aay Yojana (Nyay), the hand-out programme, by the second year of its operation, and increase defence expenditure in relation to GDP. Taken together, they constitute an expansion of government expenditure by somewhere between 5 per cent and 7 per cent of