As the country is gearing up for the upcoming Lok Sabha elections, the latest data analysis shows that the average year-on-year median asset growth for incumbents belonging to the National Democratic Alliance is 31 times of a common individual.
The Informed Voter Project’s report grades the government as ‘strictly average’ as 81.5 percent of agriculture and environment related promises received medium or worse than medium performance.
Informed Voter Project, a non-profit institution, analyses the candidates and political parties according to their manifestos, performance statistics, criminal record, assets and education.
As a part of the initiative, independent researchers from Mumbai have been informing citizens about the candidates in the city from the last eight elections and this year, the report card also provides the citizens with the data about the annual growth rate of the candidates’ assets.
According to the Credit SuisseGlobal Wealth Databook, the median per capita assets in India, which reflects the accumulated wealth-level below which 50 percent of the population lives, grew at the annual rate of 10.7 percent from 2014 to 2019, whereas the growth rate from 2019 to 2022 was recorded at just 0.7 percent.
At the same time, the incumbents affiliated with the National Democratic Alliance reported 22 percent year-on-year asset growth on an average, whereas the incumbents from the INDIA bloc parties recorded 10 percent growth on an average.
Vivek Gilani from the Informed Voter Project, said, “Analysing this data, we can say that the average wealth growth of the incumbents from NDA is 31.42 times that of the common citizens, whereas the growth of INDIA bloc incumbents is 14.28 times more.”
The Informed Voter Project also examined the actions by the NDA government towards the fulfilment of promises made in the 2019 elections. Out of the 33 promises related to agriculture and farmers’ welfare, the evaluation showed that 43 percent were graded as ‘very-low’ performance, 11 percent as ‘low’, 34 percent as ‘medium’, 11 percent as ‘medium-high’ and none was graded as ‘high’ performance.
The researchers also evaluated 13 environment related promises, out of which 46 percent are graded as ‘very low’ performance whereas 15 percent were graded as ‘high’ performance. On an average, 81.5 percent of the promises related to both the sectors showed medium or worse than medium performance of the government.
“Our analysis of performance in the 17th Lok Sabha reveals the ruling party and the NDA government is a strictly average alliance of members. It’s nearly always in the middle of the classroom- almost never right up-front like a bright curious student of the subject. So no wonder these past five years of government performance is not such a fulfilling experience and we’re starved. The delivery still hasn’t arrived in many cases,” said the report.
