Election manifestos: After pro-women planks, parties take a youth turn

While its Madhya Pradesh manifesto, released last week, also promised monthly allowances to unemployed youth, it also sought to appeal to their aspirations

Amid the chorus of promises that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Congress have made in poll-bound states to empower women and help farmers through either new welfarist schemes or increasing the allowance of the existing ones, the two parties on Friday issued aspirational youth-oriented election manifestos. The focus is now on improving the quality of education and sops to ensure increased enrolment and attendance to government-run schools and colleges.

Over the past week, with its youth-specific promises in its Madhya Pradesh manifesto, where the BJP faces years of anti-incumbency, the Congress has seemed keener to tap the constituency, especially of the educated unemployed youth, including young parents.

 

On Friday, Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot announced in Jaipur that the Congress, if comes back to power, would provide laptops or tablets to all first-year students of government colleges and free education in the state-run English medium schools, called the Mahatma Gandhi Government English Medium Schools. The state government has promised 2,000 such schools, a little over a fourth of which are functional and popular with parents. 

In poll-bound Mizoram, which will vote on November 7, BJP President J P Nadda released his party’s ‘vision document’, promising to wean the state’s youth off drugs, schemes to upgrade state’s schools and colleges by allocating Rs 600 crore, construct a Mizoram sports academy, and launch Mizoram Olympic mission. The BJP’s Mizoram manifesto, with its focus on the state’s youth, is an outlier as women’s empowerment is the leitmotif of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s recent public meetings in the poll-bound states, where women BJP workers have felicitated him to showcase the passage of the Women’s Reservation Bill during the special session of Parliament in September.

But after feedback from the ground of discontent over unemployment, inflation, and the rising cost of education, the Congress has altered its strategy that in the Himachal Pradesh and Karnataka Assembly polls, in November 2022 and April-May 2023, respectively, foregrounded its promises to the women electorate. In Karnataka, for example, it has delivered upon its ‘guarantees’ to women, such as monthly cash transfers of Rs 2,500 and free travel in state transport buses. The Congress is yet to implement its ‘Yuva Nidhi’ guarantee in Karnataka, where it promised allowances ranging from Rs 1,500 to Rs 3,000 to educated unemployed youth for a maximum of two years if they do not find a job.

While its Madhya Pradesh manifesto, released last week, also promised monthly allowances to unemployed youth, it sought to appeal to their aspirations. The party said it would fill 200,000 vacancies in government jobs, end outsourcing of jobs by government departments, absorb contractual workers, create a hundred thousand new positions in villages, and spend on building IT parks in Indore, Bhopal, Gwalior, and Jabalpur. Its promises to set up a centre to teach artificial intelligence and found an Indian Premier League team of the state were intended to portray the party’s vision as aspirational to its estimated 20 million youth, Congress sources said. In MP, the Congress has also promised Rs 500 to Rs 1,500 monthly allowance to students from classes fifth to twelfth of government-run schools.