Can manifestos win elections?

After not being able to turn the Rafale fighter jet deal into an effective campaign issue, after having struggled to counter the narrative of “nationalism” created by the BJP and the Narendra Modi government after the terrorist attack at Pulwama and the retaliatory Balakot airstrikes, the Congress Party desperately needed another weapon to counter the rising popularity of the ruling BJP.  The Congress Party then made yet another desperate effort to reach out to the masses and attract voters through its manifesto. The party went ahead, claiming its manifesto was a democratic exercise carrying “the collective voice of lakhs of people”, unlike the “mann ki baat of one individual”. On the front page of its manifesto, it promises that the “Congress will deliver”. A few days after, the BJP releases its “Sankalp Patra”, highlighting its commitment to the pledges it had taken. While the Congress, trying to popularise what it promises the people in its manifesto, is hoping to shift the narrative of the 2019 election in its favour, the BJP is hoping it would make the party even more popular and might help it achieve a bigger victory. Sadly, none of the two may happen as voters hardly vote keeping in mind promises made by parties in manifestos. The outcome of the 2019 election will be decided on things other than promises in the manifestos.

Voters hardly read manifestos. I doubt even party workers take them seriously. Many of us come to know what political parties are promising in their manifesto only from the discussion in the print and electronic media and on social media. But sadly, the discussion in the media about these manifestos is largely restricted to highlighting how manifestos of political parties differ from one another. How many times does the word “promise” appear in the manifesto of the Congress and how many times the word “development” appears in the BJP’s manifesto?
Given the number of copies of manifestos that are printed, it is reasonable to believe that the reach of manifestos remains limited, and is hardly circulated to the wider public. Given the relatively limited access to the Internet and overall low and moderate levels of literacy in India, not many people take the pain of flipping or scrolling through them. Large numbers of voters rely on the information about what is mentioned in the manifestos through hoardings or speeches or other sources of communication between parties and voters. For a majority of voters, the news of manifestos being released by parties seems to have more weight than what the manifestos actually contain.

What seems to matter more in present-day elections is not the content of what political parties are promising through their manifestos, but how effectively these parties are able to convey this to the voters. The art of communication has taken precedence over the promises made by parties.

The only change which has happened in this election regarding manifestos is the timing of their release. While the Election Commission, on the directions of the Supreme Court in its 2013 order, has issued guidelines to parties on the release of their manifestos, the media makes sure that it takes it seriously. However, the relevant questions at this stage are: Do manifestos really win elections? Amidst the rallies, speeches, roadshows, hoardings, banners, announcements, and a lot more happening all around, do manifestos dominate the minds of voters?

At the time of elections, as it seems, what matters the most is how quickly, easily and simply you are able to communicate your ideas, agendas and work plan to the people. A lot depends on how quickly you are able to create a narrative, or change the narrative and replace it with a counter-narrative. With the country in the middle of a seven-phase Lok Sabha election, it’s more of a word game. Sadly, this war of words has only intensified in the past few weeks, and parties and candidates are engaged in this in order to mobilise voters in their favour.  Unfortunately, some populist ideas being communicated in a simple but attractive language seem to do the trick: quirky one-liners and fancy abbreviations while addressing rallies; catchy slogans on billboards; party anthems on TV and radio channels; and much more on similar lines seems to be far more attractive to voters than the promises which parties are making in their manifestos.

In the middle of the election cycle, when parties need to work hard to mobilise undecided floating voters who constitute nearly one-fourth of total voters, the party which finds a better language to communicate with the voters always has a huge advantage over others, despite having a not-so-convincing manifesto. This is not to undermine the importance of manifestos, but considering Indian elections, they do not have much role to play as of now. Even post-elections, the ruling party, or its voters, seldom goes back to what has been promised in the manifesto.

This certainly raises another important question: Have the elections in the biggest democracy in the world simply been reduced to how well you are able to communicate with voters just weeks or days before elections? Large numbers amongst the undecided voters end up becoming prey to the catchy language used by political parties and their leaders for communicating their promises, failing to read or decode their manifestos. This may be summed up with two lines from Bashir Badra’s poem, replacing not-so-relevant “mohabbaton” with somewhat-relevant “manifesto” in the present context: “Mujhe ishtihaar si lagti hain ye ‘manifesto’ ki kahaniyan, jo kaha nahin wo suna karo, jo suna nahin wo kaha karo. (The stories of manifestos seem to be more like advertisements to me. Try listening to what hasn’t been told; try to say what hasn’t been heard.)”

Sanjay Kumar is a professor and currently the director of the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies. Manjesh Rana is a researcher at Lokniti, a research programme at CSDS. The views expressed here are personal.