Congress vs BJP: Rural Progress in Key Sectors

When it comes to rural development in India—whether in housing, healthcare, electrification, or infrastructure—the comparison between Congress-led governments before 2014 and the BJP government after reflects a stark contrast between intent and implementation. Congress certainly laid the groundwork, launching important flagship programs like the Indira Awaas Yojana for rural housing and the National Rural Health Mission for healthcare access. But despite the noble intentions, these schemes were often marred by poor execution, corruption, and lack of accountability.

Take rural housing, for instance. Indira Awaas Yojana, launched in 1985, aimed to provide free homes to the poor. By 2014, around 2.9 crore houses had been built, but the process was sluggish, riddled with middlemen, and notorious for substandard construction. Slow fund disbursal from the Centre and poor oversight at the state level only worsened things. Enter the BJP’s Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana – Gramin in 2016, which inherited this challenge but chose to fix the rot. By leveraging geo-tagging, real-time dashboards, and Direct Benefit Transfer, PMAY-G transformed rural housing into a targeted and transparent mission. In less than a decade, over 3 crore rural homes were sanctioned, many completed with speed and better quality, without the chronic delays that haunted its predecessor.

Healthcare told a similar story. Congress’s National Rural Health Mission, launched in 2005, helped improve maternal and child health indicators, but its infrastructure goals fell short. Primary and community health centres remained understaffed, ill-equipped, and largely inaccessible to those who needed them most. BJP’s Ayushman Bharat initiative, launched in 2018 took a broader, more integrated approach. Its Health and Wellness Centres brought comprehensive care closer to villages, while the Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana—dubbed the world’s largest health assurance scheme—brought financial protection to over 50 crore people. The digital push through initiatives like eSanjeevani and the use of digital health IDs marked a decisive shift from paper files to portable health data, something Congress never managed at scale.

In electrification, too, Congress can claim some credit with the Rajiv Gandhi Grameen Vidyutikaran Yojana, which saw village-level electrification climb to 96% by 2013. But the real bottleneck—household connections—was barely addressed, leaving nearly a third of rural homes in the dark. BJP, through the Deendayal Upadhyaya Gram Jyoti Yojana and the Saubhagya scheme, took this mission to its logical end. By 2019, the government declared 100% village electrification and brought electricity to over 2.6 crore additional households. The emphasis wasn’t just on numbers but also on sustainability, with a visible push for decentralized solar systems, especially in remote and off-grid locations.

In the end, the Congress regime set the stage, but too often the curtain never rose. The BJP government took existing frameworks, cleaned them up, and delivered at scale, fast, focused, and digitally. Some may argue that the BJP had better tools at its disposal, like improved digital infrastructure and easier access to data. But tools alone don’t build homes or power villages—governance does. And that’s where the BJP’s shift from planning to performance has made all the difference.

Overall Comparison Table