Kerala assembly elections 2021: Meet Keralite who has collected Congress manifestos since 1937

KOZHIKODE: Mangalam Gopinath, 83, who had been dutifully collecting all the manifestos of Congress from the 1937 Indian provincial elections in British India onwards, could be the most qualified person to evaluate the UDF manifesto released on Saturday.


Gopinath, a local Congress leader based in Manjeri, views every new manifesto as sacred and not just another addition to his shelf full of party manifestos he has amassed over the decades.


This time, he shared his suggestions with UDF manifesto committee members, including MP Shashi Tharoor and Dr M K Muneer, when they visited Malappuram as part of the interaction programme to solicit suggestions from the public for drafting the manifesto.

“I told the leaders that there are unfulfilled promises, and that those should be incorporated in the new manifesto. Overall, I feel that the new UDF manifesto is forward looking and has the right mix of plans for social welfare and development, including the NYAY scheme and plans for creation of world-class infrastructure,” he said.

This time the attempt to solicit suggestions from the public to prepare the manifesto is a welcome one. It will transform the manifesto from a dull document into a dynamic and responsive one, he added.

“For the last many years, Congress workers in the state don’t have much connect with manifestos. The printed copies of the party manifesto of 2019 parliamentary elections were not even available at KPCC office and I got one after contacting AICC general secretary K C Venugopal,” Gopinath said.

Though manifesto soft copies are readily available, that won’t serve the purpose in a country like India with a pronounced digital divide, he added.

Gopinath’s love affair with manifestos started at the age of 16 when he started collecting manifestos to prepare speeches during election campaigns as a Congress worker.

“In those times, party manifestos were the only source of information to know what the parties would deliver if voted to power. We used to carefully study the document and made it a point to devote a major portion of our campaign speeches on that. But now, controversies like KIIFB, Life Mission, gold smuggling, etc, have become main campaign points. I don’t think that that is the proper way to campaign,” he said.

Gopinath continues his habit of collecting and tracking manifestos and has over 100 manifestos, including that of Left parties and BJP, apart from all the manifestos of Congress.