Rajasthan: How Gehlot fulfilled promises and Vasundhara govt remained ineffective

In 1998, when the Ashok Gehlot government came to power in the state, Gehlot handed over the party’s manifesto to the Chief Secretary of the state. He told the bureaucracy that the manifesto is not only a pious document but also the commitment to the people and his government would like to fulfil all the promises made in the manifesto with the active support of the administration.

The Opposition then questioned that Gehlot was trying to impose the party’s political programme on the bureaucracy. Undeterred, Gehlot followed the manifesto and would speak about the unfulfilled promises and seek the bureaucracy's support to implement it. It was a good initiative and several states followed it.

But though the BJP’s manifesto in 2013 promised to create 15 lakh jobs, the promise could not be fulfilled. The youth, who overwhelmingly voted in the favour of the BJP in 2013, started questioning the promises made by the state government which itself admitted that it could provide only three lakh jobs.

When the state government even cut down on the guaranteed employment under MGNREGA, which is a centrally sponsored programme funded by the Central government, the die was cast.

Vasundhara Raje went to all the districts with the Prashasan Apke Dwar programme. It was the biggest-ever mass contact programme in the state. But during these visits, she received tonnes of memoranda and complaints. But officials at the district level who were entrusted with the job of reading the memoranda and provide redressals did not even open the envelopes. With an ineffective and irresponsible district administration, the Vasundhara Raje government started earning the tag of a government that simply did not care.

When Vasundhara Raje launched her Gaurav Yatra to tell the people about the achievements of the government, she had to face the anger and annoyance of the people who wanted to know what happened to their grievances and when they would be redressed.

The Congress prepared an Aarop Patra or the charge sheet against the Vasundhara Raje government. This charge sheet not only highlighted corruption in the government but also talked about the unfulfilled promises.

The Congress this time armed all its 195 candidates with this document and asked them to go to the people, listing the unfulfilled promises and the instances of corruption that became the watchword of the BJP government. This saw the BJP reeling and its leaders started answering these charges with emotional issues like caste, religion, mandir and gotra.

The anti-incumbency factor surfaced like a monster. So much so that the shaken think tank of the party, as a part of strategy, asked Prime Minister Narendra Modi to talk of the Union government’s social welfare programmes and its so-called economic achievements. Modi stopped talking on state issues and whenever he made some reference to it, he was booed. This was a clear embarrassment to the Prime Minister and he could sense the mood of the people.

The BJP’s manifesto had no mention about its commitment to the minority. It tried to woo back the youth by promising them ₹5,000 per month as unemployment allowance. It carried no conviction because the state’s public debt is more than ₹60,000 crore. Leave alone paying back the debt, it has no money to even pay the interest on it.

While people have been weighing the options and comparing promises made by parties, Vasundhara Raje stressed on the urgency of getting five more years to fulfil her promises. The counting day will tell if this cut any ice with voters.