Ignoring rural distress, jobs hurt BJP: Experts

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inflation, rural distress and unemployment weigh heavily on the Indian economy. During April, retail inflation eased slightly to 4.83%, down from 4.85% in March, mainly due to falling fuel prices. However, food inflation remained elevated.

Rural distress, mainly due to erratic rains, and rising unemployment have also hurt citizens. "The construction of the Ram temple hasn't yielded any positive results for the BJP. The party should work more on people-centric measures and welfare activities rather than religion-centric activities.

They concentrated more on the development of infrastructure but welfare measures are important," said S Janakarajan, Professor of Economics at the Madras Institute of Development Studies. "Welfare measures in the Congress manifesto made an impact. Its manifesto, which addressed many issues, was completely people-centric," he added.

The manifesto, titled ‘Nyay Patra’, promised jobs, development of infrastructure, higher minimum support prices (MSP) for farmers, universal free healthcare and a national caste census. The highlights of the BJP manifesto included the continuation of the free ration scheme for the next five years, delivering clean drinking water, providing free electricity to the poor, synchronized general and assembly elections, and building bullet train corridors. Equally, some experts argued that the manifestos didn't really have an impact on the election results.

N.R. Bhanumurthy, vice chancellor of Dr BR Ambedkar School of Economics University, Bengaluru, said the BJP has scaled up many welfare schemes, some of which were a continuation of the earlier Congress-led government's policies. "It is more of the government's performance of the last five years.