Civil society unhappy with manifestos

NEW DELHI: Gone are the days when political parties could dish out any promise in their party manifestos. Today, citizens want to not only scrutinise each item in the manifesto but want their genuine concerns to be incorporated in the manifestos and also want to hold parties accountable for their implementation.
`Wada Na Todo Abhiyan', spearheaded by a group of activists, NGOs and prominent civil society members, who have scrutinised the manifestos of major political parties, find them (parties) not serious about it as they have brought out their documents barely 2-3 weeks before elections.The Abhiyan claims that often genuine issues of people are not reflected in the manifestos.
The fact that parties released their manifestos barely two weeks before the elections indicated they were not serious about ensuring an extensive debate and civic engagement with their political agenda, said Abhiyan spokesperson Lysa John. "No party has talked of enacting a law to protect citizen's right to quality, affordable health services," she said. She also pointed out that "HIV/AIDS has found no mention in any party's manifesto".
Again no manifesto talks of tackling the problem of human rights violations or corruption, said Suhas Chakma from NGO Asian Centre of Human Rights. Kuldeep Mathur, a retired JNU professor, pointed out that all political parties spoke about providing "good governance, without explaining what it means".
He said in reality governance is not a prerogative of only the government. It also involved other players like the civil society. Hence, in a democracy, active participation of citizens in governance was essential, he stressed.