With effectively 18 odd days in hand for selected candidates to finish their campaigning, there will a tendency for most parties to over promise. In the rain shower of promises, all parties are either over promising or promising without perspective.
Look at job creation for instance. The Congress has promised 100% jobs for Goans while the Aam Aadmi party has promised that it will create 50,000 jobs with a reservation of 80% jobs for Goans. The job creation race, to be honest, is extremely tricky. Creation of jobs is directly linked to attracting the right kind of investments. And massive manufacturing industries, which actually create job quantities, are few and far between. The supposed slew of investments cleared by the Investment Promotion Board, does not, repeat does not, have manufacturing industries even among the top three sectors of investments. The linkage between jobs and new industries is acute. And the reasons why multinationals or even domestic majors are not quite making a beeline to sign up for investments is because key infrastructure boxes have not been ticked, regular supply of high quality power being one. Transport and logistics are added needs and finally large amounts of land which are locked with departments or with entities which are not using it, need to be freed up for more investments coming in. Otherwise the cycle of land acquisition and taking land away from farmers or the rural poor, will offset any gains made through job creation.
The 50,000 jobs promise was made by the current government and it has fallen short. Anyone promising jobs cannot do so without an accompanying presentation on how it proposes to handle infrastructure needs and how they will be funded. The same logic applies to promises of 100% reservation in jobs for Goans made by the Congress or the 80% figure of AAP’s.
One of the areas where the current BJP government has admittedly fallen way short has been job creation. Internal surveys conducted by the party in the run up to the elections, have shown that the failure to deliver on the job front is indeed one of party’s biggest concerns. It is unlikely that any other party coming to power will create any magic on the job front without a revamp of the entire approach towards job creation which has to be inclusive and has to come from traditional sectors like tourism, fishing , farming coupled with new age jobs and businesses.
Another promise made without compete perspective is AAP’s CM candidate’s promise that justice for taxi drivers will be done. With all due respect and sympathies for the sons of the soil, they are not facing as much injustice as the tourists of Goa. Some intellectuals have even justified that crazy taxi fares by saying that these are two way fares because the cab comes back empty. This is an argument which will struggle to find logic to carry this through. The counter argument cannot be that private radio cabs are not the answer and they shouldn’t be supported. Firstly why shouldn’t they be supported when they are welcomed all over the country? But in Goa, even if local interests are to be kept in mid, Goan taxi drivers will become partners in the radio cab business and drive the cabs as they do now, but under a system and with controls.
After all justice is needed for Goa and not for Goan vote banks.
