Indian Parties’ Election Pledges and Pledge Fulfilment

This paper examines the policy choice that the main Indian parties offer to citizens in national election campaigns, and the extent to which the policies and outcomes they promise are subsequently realized. Existing comparative work on election pledges has not considered India, which is the world’s largest representative democracy as measured by population size. We examine key aspects of democratic performance in India – the policy content of parties’ manifestos, and the extent to which these policies are congruent with subsequent government policies– from a comparative perspective, while attending to the unique characteristics of Indian democracy. The study aims to understand the differences and similarities between established Indian democracy and established Western democracies. This is supported by three features of our research design. First, researchers with complementary country expertise and theoretical perspectives collaborate. Second, concepts and research procedures from previous comparative research are applied and adapted to Indian cases. Third, the research highlights and explores the uniqueness of Indian representation in analytical narratives. The study examines the manifestos of the two main Indian parties, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Indian National Congress (INC), for the five most recent national elections (1999, 2004, 2009, 2014 and 2019). We code and compare election pledges in each of the manifestos following the procedures of the Comparative Party Pledges Project. Election pledges are commitments to carry out certain actions or achieve certain outcomes that are testable. We also assess whether these pledges were fulfilled by subsequent government policies and outcomes. By applying these established research approaches to Indian politics for the first time, the study assesses and compares the policy choices offered by Indian parties. To further examine the particular character of Indian representation, we provide narratives relating to issues that have been uniquely salient in Indian politics, concerning religious and caste issues.