The deprivations of the poor – not their ethnic identity – have been getting the attention of the Indian state and the political parties. The size of this class of welfare aspirants is substantial from an electoral point of view. Therefore, every political party seems eager to address the issues of deprivations. Democratic representation of the marginalized in the policy space has emerged. Political parties try to articulate and represent people’s voices on social protection. The welfare narrative in India shifted from a moral necessity for social protection to democratic responsiveness based on maximization of the interests of citizens as well as those of political parties. Welfare issue finds a significant space in electoral politics.
India’s General Election in 2024 is marked by a new crescendo on welfare pledges by political parties. Each one seemed to be accusing the other of extending the ‘freebies’ to citizens, while promising similar benefits in its own policy documents. The two major national political parties in India – Congress and the BJP — have their ideological differences on several issues. These differences, however, do not overshadow significant continuities in their formulation and implementation of welfare policies. One may find a few visible signs of convergence on a model welfare that responds to the needs of the marginalized. We hypothesize that a bipartisan acceptance of a citizen-centric welfare policy has emerged. We will empirically verify the extent of convergence in the positions taken by the Congress and the BJP on welfare policies by examining their electoral pledges as expressed in their manifestos released before the 2024 elections.
Welfare policy in a representative democracy is not merely a bureaucratic output reflecting a state’s capacity to use its resources. Anthony Downs in his influential book, An Economic Theory of Democracy, wrote, “parties formulate policies in order to win elections, rather than win elections in order to formulate policies” (1957: 28). Political parties design a policy that would please the voters. If a party gets a mandate to form the government, it tries its best to translate its pre-electoral promises to formulate public policies. Thus, the political parties are links between the citizens and policy (Manow, et al. 2018). However, such linkages are neither static nor uniform. The changing context of electoral politics gets reflected in a party’s strategy on welfare policy (Häusermann, et al. 2013). Strong ideological parties may be exceptions. Demographic changes generate new preferences and expectations of the voting-age population (Kitschelt 1994). Emergence, transformation or demise of parties in a democracy creates new dynamics in party competition (Picot 2013; Abou-Chadi and Immergut 2019). A party may like to expand its linkages as a mobilization strategy. Therefore, a party’s position on policy space varies according to the changing preferences of voters and the positions taken by other parties (Lynch 2006; Schumacher, et al. 2013). A party’s strategic consideration to broaden its political base results in the expansion of citizen-based welfare policies.
Welfare as an Electoral issue in India
Democratic politics in India has influenced the welfare policy and vice-versa. The ideological and ethnical differentiations among political parties (Naseemullah 2021) have given way to convergence, especially in the welfare sector. A recent study concludes that, instead of stereotyped identity voting, “voters in India do make their vote choice on the basis of the performance of the incumbent party” (Jensenius and Suryanarayan 2022: 828). It logically follows that the two major national parties in India – the Congress and the BJP – could be competing for the support from the same set of economically vulnerable citizens.
The new socio-political context at the turn of this century has generated a new trend in welfare politics in India. Political parties tried to compete with each other to come closer to welfare aspirant groups by proclaiming their stand on social protection, as has been evident from their electoral manifestos and other policy pronouncements. Their electoral calculus has provided new political space for the citizens. Democratic politics has recognized the citizens’ entitlements to welfare allocations by the state. Political parties – whether in government or in opposition – have been responding favourably to the idea of welfare as a right and to the demands of social citizenship. This “new welfare architecture” (Ruparelia 2013) – which may be termed as responsive welfare – is the result of the changing political representation in recent times.
India’s welfare trajectory started with minimal social protection within the overall project of a developmental state. The moral imperative to take care of the needy, which used to be within the sphere of the community, guided the democratic state’s policies. It was soon realized, however, that slow economic growth may not help to resolve rising expectations of competing ethnic and cultural categories in India. Political actors started using their control over the government to adopt welfare strategies to create strong linkages with their respective supporters and to reinforce their electoral advantages. Clientelistic allocation of goods and services were made to support social groups based on religion, caste or other ethnic identities. The needs of the citizens were gradually converted to demands. This was followed by new modes of popular engagement through community-based projects to promote individual initiatives. The consequent rise in participation led to the use of the democratic process to highlight citizens’ deprivations. This new context prompted the political actors to realize the importance of formulating welfare policies that the citizens wanted. Every successful political party tried to synchronize its stand with the voters’ expectations. Policy entrepreneurs generated new policy alternatives through competitive party politics. Democratic representation of the marginalized in the policy space emerged. The welfare narrative in India shifted from a moral necessity for social protection to democratic responsiveness based on maximization of the interests of citizens as well as those of political parties.
The model of clientelistic welfare did not successfully address the issue of social security (Chandra 2014). Therefore, the ethnic linkages of political mobilization got dismantled gradually (Sarangi 2005). The state’s efforts to reduce economic poverty failed to improve the quality of life. Removal of inherent deprivations of the poor and enhancing their capacity for a secure livelihood were not adequately addressed. This became a new rallying ground to unite and protest. Social activists made the state to take pro-active measures in addressing the demands of the disadvantaged groups (Ehmke 2011). The deprivations of the poor – not their ethnic identity – have been getting the attention of the Indian state and the political class. The size of this class of citizens is substantial from an electoral point of view. At least one- third of the electorate belongs to this category of a “welfare aspirant class” of citizens. This is a huge number, which could make or break the electoral prospect of a political party. Therefore, every political party seemed eager to address the issues of deprivations. Welfare has gradually emerged as a valence issue in the process of political representation in contemporary India. It has created a new linkage between the citizens and the parties.
The position of Indian political parties on welfare policies varied immensely from the 1970s till the turn of the century. Class, ethnic and regional support bases of the parties were reflected in the stand taken by each one of them. Welfare was used to dispense patronage in the expectation of electoral support (Anderson, et al. 2015; Elliott 2016). Expectations of the needy were rarely ascertained. Beneficiaries were not engaged in the policy process. The reconceptualization of citizens as consumers rather than being clients – a consequence of economic reforms in India – led to demands for social citizenship (Sabates-Wheeler, et al. 2020). Welfare emerged as a valence issue in electoral competition (Adhikari, et al. 2024).
The rise of a sizable number of welfare aspirants after the economic reforms hastened the process of transformation of welfare from a positional issue to a valence issue. This group held almost identical views on most of the benefits accruing to needy citizens. Since the state’s policy on welfare had a great deal of impact on the lives and well-being of beneficiaries, their opinion on a policy had direct electoral consequences. Parties had very little choice except to offer very similar electoral promises on welfare issues (Sarangi 2021).
In the absence of differences in policy positions, voters generally assess parties on the basis of their integrity, performance and responsiveness. A pragmatic party takes the clue to underemphasize its ideological position, if any, and projects its professional competence to convince the voters. In the changed political context of India, each party has been hoping to represent the welfare aspirants and fulfil their expectations. Welfare policy, therefore, is no longer a divisive issue among the major political parties in India. It reflects the views and aspirations of a set of active and concerned citizens. Patronage welfare (Naseemullah 2021) has been gradually replaced by responsive welfare (Aiyar and Walton 2015; Besley and Burgess 2002).
Election manifesto and Methodology
A political party presents its pre-electoral pledges in various forms: speeches, interviews, pamphlets, posters, advertisements in the mass media, etc. But the document that summarizes these commitments is the election manifesto. India has a long tradition of written manifestoes being presented by almost every political party. In earlier decades they were tiny leaflets. Now they are well drafted, nicely printed, and often illustrated brochures containing a substantial amount of political information. They can easily match any corporate marketing document. Generally, they are drafted by a small group of party professionals, discussed in the party’s highest decision-making body, and endorsed by the top leadership. Such a document contains a party’s assessment of the possible issues that it considers to be important at the time of election and a set of proposals for addressing them. Very often elaborate research goes into its drafting. The views of party activists and intellectuals as well as advice from professional pollsters are used as inputs. This document encapsulates a party’s overall position on various issues. Its salient features reach the voters through mass media, speeches, discussions, etc. A party uses its manifesto to market itself before the electorate and to distinguish its policies from those of the other parties in electoral competition. Parties seem to believe that their promises in these documents can influence voting behavior, in spite of long-term support based on party loyalty and social cleavages (Choubey, 2021; Kumar, 2020; Tiwari, 2018).
In a nutshell, the election manifestoes are the best available documents (1) to analyze a party’s promises on policies to the electorate; (2) to generate a consensus on strategic issues within a party; and (3) to assess the closeness or distance between the parties on various issues in an arena of electoral competition.
Methodology
An election manifesto is carefully drafted to present a positive image of the party. It is often verbose and restrained at the same time. Its dry and ambiguous prose is a challenge for discourse analysts. However, if it is seen as a policy link between citizens and the party, one needs to decipher the ‘pledges’ contained in the document. It is expected that a party will fulfill those expectations in the form of public policies if it is elected to form the government. Therefore, for our purposes a ‘pledge’ has to be narrowly defined as “a statement committing a party to one specific action or outcome that can be clearly determined to have occurred or not” (Naurin et al., 2019: 24) after a party forms the government after an election. Such a definition makes a distinction between a broad, general promise which may not be implementable and a specific commitment which could possibly be translated to legislative and administrative action. It is the latter which will to be coded and counted while operationalizing a pledge for the purposes of the present research. Following the tradition set in the above definition, a pledge would “include both a firm commitment, such as “we will” or “we promise to”, and a more softly described intention, such as “we support” or “we favor”, as long as parties indicate that they support the action or outcome referred to unequivocally” (Naurin et al., 2019: 24).
In other words, we will test the commitment of a party to a policy with an objective to translate it into action or outcome. Rhetorical or emotional language carries very little value for practical implementation. For example, sentences like, ‘we will give justice to the marginalized’ or ‘we will address the issues of domestic violence’ would be excluded. Similarly, sentences which have words like ‘we will look into’ or ‘we will investigate’ or ‘we will review’ will not be counted as pledges.
The coding unit is a ‘pledge,’ not a sentence. There may be more than one pledge in a single sentence. Or, several sentences may have been used to convey a single pledge. If the same pledge is found more than once, it is counted as one pledge. If a pledge is conveyed both in broad and narrow language, it is the narrow version that is coded. For example, if both the sentences ‘we will reduce unemployment’ and ‘we will reduce unemployment by 2%’ appear in the same manifesto, it is the latter that is counted. However, no weight is given to the use of language which reveals a stronger commitment or a higher order of priority. Each pledge is counted as one commitment.
The Context of 2024 Elections in India
General elections were held in India from 19 April to 1 June 2024 in seven phases, to elect all 543 members of the Lok Sabha, the lower House of the Parliament. Votes were counted and the result was declared on 4 June to form the 18th Lok Sabha. India has a multi-party system with two major parties, namely the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Indian National Congress (INC), that dominate politics at the national level. Several regional parties have a strong presence at the State level. Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) was in power during 2004-2014.The BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) replaced the UPA in 2014 and has been governing the country for two terms before facing the 2024 elections. Since the BJP by itself had an absolute majority after the 2014 and 2019 elections, it did not technically need day to day support from its allies. However, the results of the 2024 elections changed that political equation. BJP managed to win only 240 seats, far short of the absolute majority of 272. Its total tally, along with the allies, was 293, far less than 400+ seats it had hoped to secure. The parties opposing the NDA – including the Congress – formed a new alliance called Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA) prior to the 2024 elections. This alliance managed to secure 234 seats, out of which the share of Congress was 99. The politics of India witnessed predominantly bipolar competition in the run-up to the 2024 Indian general elections. The trend of a relative weakening of the BJP and the resurgence of the Congress hides the larger trend of policy convergence on most issues which affect the average voters. Welfare and local livelihood issues dominated the campaign to mobilise votes by both the coalitions. This is reflected in their election manifestoes.
Welfare issues in Election Manifestoes of the Congress and the BJP
We have sub-divided the welfare pledges into seven categories: Food and Agriculture; Education and Skill Development; Healthcare and Sanitation; SC/ST and Minorities; Students and Youth; Women and Children; and Vulnerable Sections, including Labor, Senior Citizens, and Differently Abled. We looked at the trends in the volume of pledges by the Congress and the BJP in all these seven areas during the last four elections (Table 1). Contrary to popular perception, the total number of pledges by either of the parties has declined in 2024, compared to the 2019 election. However, each party has almost identical number of welfare pledges before the last election: 89 by the Congress and 94 by the BJP. The highest proportion of each party’s pledges was devoted to the vulnerable sections of the society. This significant shift could be because of the identical perception of the two parties on the scope of mobilizing votes from the vulnerable sections. It is also possible that the parties’ promises follow a cyclical pattern, e.g., if benefits to the farmers have reached a saturation point, those areas are underemphasized in a subsequent election. The second most emphasis of the two parties – again identical – is the pledge related to the SC/ST and minorities. While the Congress tries to renew its linkage on this sector, the BJP’s goal is to make inroads into this section of society. Both the parties have been careful not to ignore the expectations of any of the welfare-aspirants groups. Given the high volume of pledges for the marginalized sections of society, who happen to be numerically a large group of electors, there seems to be a consensus among the two major parties that welfare policies could be the instruments to reap electoral dividends.
Table 1: Number and percentage (in parentheses) of pledges in the welfare sector by Congress and the BJP (2009–2024).
| 2009 | 2014 | 2019 | 2024 | |||||
| Congress | BJP | Congress | BJP | Congress | BJP | Congress | BJP | |
| Food and Agriculture | 9 (21.4) | 13 (17.8) | 13 (15.3) | 25 (20.7) | 25 (16.2) | 40 (34.2) | 11 (12.4) | 14 (14.9) |
| Education and Skill Development | 5 (11.9) | 9 (12.3) | 11 (12.9) | 15 (12.4) | 11 (7.1) | 16 (13.7) | 15 (16.9) | 11 (11.7) |
| Healthcare and Sanitation | 2 (4.8) | 9 (12.3) | 10 (11.8) | 22 (18.2) | 30 (19.5) | 11 (9.4) | 10 (11.2) | 8 (8.5) |
| SC/ST and Minorities | 11 (26.2) | 8 (11.0) | 15 (17.6) | 14 (11.6) | 33 (21.4) | 11 (9.4) | 16 (17.9) | 16 (17.0) |
| Students and Youth | 3 (7.1) | 8 (11.0) | 9 (10.6) | 13 (10.7) | 9 (5.8) | 11 (9.4) | 7 (7.9) | 12 (12.8) |
| Women and Children | 5 (11.9) | 12 (16.4) | 18 (21.2) | 18 (14.9) | 20 (13.0) | 18 (15.4) | 12 (13.5) | 10 (10.6) |
| Vulnerable Sections, including Labor, Senior Citizens, and Differently Abled | 7 (16.7) | 14 (19.2) | 9 (10.6) | 14 (11.6) | 26 (16.9) | 10 (8.5) | 18 (20.2) | 23 (24.5) |
| Total | 42 (100) | 73 (100) | 85 (100) | 121 (100.1) | 154 (99.9) | 117 (100) | 89 (100) | 94 (100) |
Source: Coded and counted by the author from the original manifestoes as posted in the parties’ websites.
We have also compared specific pledges on welfare by the Congress and the BJP as presented in their electoral manifestoes before the 2025 elections. While the specific details of issues may vary, both the parties seem to be addressing similar welfare concerns: expanding food security programme; making agriculture remunerative to give farmers a secured income; providing insurance for crops and for fish-farmers; access to educational institutions and sports infrastructure; scholarships for Dalits, Adivasis and OBC students; skill development for generating employment and entrepreneurship; health care and health insurance for the poor; expanding the presence of women in the workforce; empower women through self-help groups; safeguarding the interests of migrant and unorganized labor; increasing the minimum wage of the workers; extending various benefits to senior citizens; and providing conveniences to the physically and visually challenged. While the above are almost identical pledges by the two parties, each one has also tried to present a few pledges, which could give itself a distinctive brand value. For example, the Congress advocates caste census to ensure the rights of Dalits, commits itself to provide Rupees one lakh per year to poor families as an unconditional cash transfer and promises to write off educational loan of the students. Similarly, the BJP wishes to expand Ujjwala Yojana to provide cooking gas to the poor families in rural areas. It assures the Adivasis to protect their livelihood, language and culture. It is significant that, so far as the marginalized population is concerned, the focus of the BJP is on the Adivasis while the Congress is soft towards the minorities.
Do the Welfare pledges influence voters?
Now there is enough evidence to suggest that Indian voters do assess their own financial gains or losses during a regime before exercising their ballot. A study after the 2024 elections reveals that “personal pocketbook voting had a significant influence on vote choice and a substantive impact on shaping electoral outcomes of the 2024 LS elections” (Alam 2024: 263). Similar conclusions were arrived at by Suri on 2004 and 2009 elections and by Swaminathan on 2014 and 2019 elections (Suri 2004, 2009; Swaminathan 2020). Therefore, political parties have been responding to the needs of citizens whose votes matter to remain in power. They seem to have accepted a new paradigm of welfare policy focused on the marginalized (Williams et al 2011). If there is a new calculus of political representation in the recent elections, the incumbent party is likely to get more support from the beneficiaries, given the fact that both the parties have emphasized on the similar welfare pledges in their manifestoes. We would empirically verify this by using the post-poll surveys conducted by the Lokniti, CSDS. It is evident from the data in Table-2 that the Congress in 2009 and the BJP in 2019 and 2024 had an edge in terms of votes from the beneficiaries. The Congress in 2014 did not get that advantage, perhaps due to the widely reported governance issues. Therefore, appropriate policy formulation and proper implementation together could yield electoral dividends.
Table-2: Percentage of Welfare Program Beneficiaries who voted for Congress or BJP, 2009, 2014, 2019 and 2024
| 2009 Lok Sabha Election | |||
| Welfare Programs | Congress voters | BJP voters | N |
| Indira Gandhi Old Age Pension | 32.1 | 11.6 | 1302 |
| NREGA | 32.7 | 16.5 | 1549 |
| Farmers’ Loan Waiver | 29.8 | 17.4 | 1227 |
| Mid-day Meals | 27.9 | 19.6 | 2429 |
| National Health Insurance | 32.0 | 14.6 | 847 |
| 2014 Lok Sabha Election | |||
| Indira/Rajiv Awas Yojana | 23.4 | 27.7 | 2257 |
| MGNREGA | 21.6 | 27.7 | 2952 |
| National Rural Health Mission | 26.3 | 33.9 | 3193 |
| Pension (old age, widow, disability, etc.) | 24.3 | 33.2 | 2643 |
| 2019 Lok Sabha Election | |||
| Awas Yojana | 20.8 | 37.6 | 4647 |
| MGNREGA | 20.0 | 32.4 | 4678 |
| Free Hospital Treatment | 18.5 | 40.3 | 3865 |
| Pension (old age, widow, disability, etc.) | 23.2 | 34.3 | 5620 |
| PDS | 18.7 | 35.8 | 9875 |
| Income Support Scheme for Farmers | 15.3 | 41.4 | 3047 |
| Agricultural Loan Waiver | 20.6 | 39.8 | 2970 |
| Ujjwala—cooking gas | 19.8 | 42.8 | 7814 |
| Jan Dhan Yojana | 18.0 | 43.9 | 5103 |
| 2024 Lok Sabha Election | |||
| MGNREGA | 19.7 | 39.2 | 6297 |
| Awas Yojana | 19.1 | 42.8 | 4716 |
| PDS | 17.9 | 36.8 | 12547 |
| Ayushman Bharat – health insurance | 23.2 | 44.8 | 5487 |
| Ujjwala – cooking gas | 20.5 | 44.1 | 8403 |
| Source: Computed from the post-poll data of National Election Study, 2009, 2014, 2019, 2024 conducted by Lokniti, CSDS, New Delhi. | |||
These data suggest that while parties formulate welfare policies as a response to the needs of the electorate, their support cannot be taken for granted without proper governance. Parties have begun to take voters’ reactions seriously — going beyond ethnic or clientelistic linkages — in their electoral calculus. Deshpande, et al, in their analysis of 2019 elections, report that “both the BJP and its allies clearly gain support among the beneficiaries of welfare schemes even when other social and political variables are statistically controlled.” Similarly, Mishra and Attri write, “the beneficiaries of most flagship schemes in 2019 were more in favour of giving the incumbent another chance than the non-beneficiaries” (Mishra and Attri 2019: 47). An elaborate study by Kailash linking welfare benefits and vote choice in 2024 elections finds that “Citizens who benefitted from schemes voted for the party that governed at the level they thought was responsible for welfare provisioning” (Kailash 2024: 239). He further supplements, “welfare benefits may generate goodwill and long-lasting electoral rewards only if welfare beneficiaries have a positive experience using these services” (Kailash 2024: 243).
Conclusion
Political parties in India tend to advocate various welfare policies to influence the opinion of the electorate. This trend was visible during the 2024 general elections. This is in continuation of the previous three elections where welfare issues were electorally salient. The political parties generally present a summary of their ideas in the election manifestoes, which take the form of pledges to citizens for inclusion in public policies if elected to form a government. Indian elections in the earlier decades were marked by divergent ideological positions of parties to symbolize their differences from each other. This trend changed during the last couple of decades. Parties’ policies tend to converge in order to attract maximum voters (Sarangi 2021). We verified this hypothesis again by looking at the election manifestoes of two major national parties in India– Congress and the BJP– in the last Lok Sabha elections held in 2024. We found that both the parties tend to respond to the needs of the marginalized in their electoral mobilization strategy. Further, many of their promises in the areas of welfare policy are almost identical. The two parties hardly contradict each other on any of the major welfare issues, as far as the contents of their manifestoes are concerned. Finally, the empirical data suggest that an incumbent party identified with the formulation of a welfare policy – combined with satisfactory governance — is likely to get electoral support from the beneficiaries of such policies.
One may discern a new trend in political representation in India. The needs and expectations of citizens are the primary determinants in the policy formulation of the political parties. An era of responsive welfare policy is likely to emerge. A policy that reflects the immediate demands of citizens may appear to be linked to short-term gains for a party; but it has the potential to create a buffer of support and goodwill which could legitimize the long-term comprehensive interests of the entire country. Such a paradigm shift in the parties’ approach to policy would provide a new political space for social citizenship in Indian democracy.
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