Economic Issues in the General Election

c s Whether or not economic issues determine the outcome of the Fourth General Election, they will have a profound impact on the course of events during the next five years and may even determine whether in this, democracy there will be a fifth election at all Taking the election manifestos of the major opposition parties, broadly speaking, it appears that there will be greater pressure on the Congress to shift its economic programme to the Right than to the Left THE ECONOMIC PROGRAMMES of political parties often get lost in the heated pre-election political debate. This is partly because the opposition parties make extravagant promises which the educated electorate knows cannot be implemented. But when an opposition party stands even a plausible chance of winning an election, as the Left-CPI-led United Front does now in Kerala, its economic programme deserves close scrutiny. The economic formulations of other opposition parties, too, should not be ignored because, in a democracy, the opposition is able, through the art of persuasion and through legitimate mass action, to influence, and even alter, the policies and programmes of the party in power. In fact, this happened in India in an ample measure between