It is not Economics: Financial Express: 18th April 2009

There are essentially three sets of parties or groups that are in contention for power in these elections. The Congress-led alliance, BJP-led alliance and what is nebulously called the Third Front. On economic issues, is there a choice for the voter? And how much do we agree with the economic manifestos?
Consider the economic performance of the last two governments. The BJP-led NDA had actually coined the phrase, ‘India shining’, as every possible sector in its perception, was looking up in 2004. Yet, it was voted out of power for a different set of reasons. The Congress-led UPA government has had four successive years of good economic numbers, something which has been repeatedly emphasised on different forums to drive home the view that there has been excellence in this area. Yet, the last year, ie. 2008-09, has been a disappointing one with low growth, high inflation, highest fiscal deficit, high current account deficit, depreciating rupee, low export growth, declining forex reserves and rising external debt.
The rational way to look at this is simply that the government of the day can take only limited credit or blame for economic performance. In general, all governments in the recent past have followed similar economic policies, depending on the circumstances. All of them try and ensure that tax income increases and spending is judicious. All of them try and make credit cheap while trying to protect the common man. Inflation is a concern and always evokes similar responses. Similarly, monsoon failures are not the creation of governments.
Further, issues like loan waivers, higher pay packages for government employees, higher subsidies, etc are standard populist principles followed by most governments across the world. But, being in the opposition, the parties will oppose such measures, but would change their position when in power. The approach to divestment, foreign investment including banking and insurance is actually the same across the board (except the Left parties). The reality is that all governments have to perforce be pursing the goal of liberalisation under the force of globalisation, and only the pace will vary.
Now, election promises also appear to be similar. The BJP, always considered a party of the middle class, has promised tax benefits for interest on bank deposits and has gone back to the famous NTR ‘rice programmes’. The Congress is also on the same plank and talks of similar programmes (each party is trying to.underprice rice). The Congress and BJP are both talking of economic inclusion, which is not really new. But neither has actually focused on measures that make agriculture resilient to weather. Every government makes huge allocations and always shows how the number of kisan credit cards increased, and how much has been spent on irrigation and road development.
This leaves really the Third Front parties. While there is a formal set of parties that constitute this front, there are others like the SP and RJD which could be anywhere. This is a set of parties that have differing economic ideologies. At one end, there is the TDP which is called the party for CII and the IT sector, and, at the other, we have the SP which is out to get rid of English and computers. In between there are the socialist parties which have worked with the capitalist right and also opposed reforms whenever inconvenient. Therefore, the Third Front would pose a conundrum in case it forms the government, though chances of retrogression are minimal.
Hence, it can be said that all parties are, at different levels, actually on the same economic plank. It is not surprising that while each one is trying to score over the other through the interpretation of numbers, they are still falling back on the conventional election tools: religion, caste and hate, which, in retrospect, may prove to be the real determinants of the final outcome.