Political promises of a 'free vaccine' are no big deal. There is simply no way to roll it out effectively if it is not free. No matter who makes the decision, it will have to be free to have any chance of being useful. Promises of more jobs, OTOH, are worth examining closely.
This is now a common promise in elections. "We'll CREATE more jobs." Mostly, the promise is not linked to any policy for job creation. It's simply stated as a promise, and repeated. That's unfortunate, because there is a lot that can actually be done to enable more employment.
Or more correctly, there is a lot that can be done to improve livelihoods. This distinction is important, because the the number of educational and training institutions that provide paths to 'employment' in the conventional sense is too small to serve even 10% of the population.
That means that any effort to solve the jobs problem through education or skilling is a 10-year job, probably longer in the poorer states. They'd be a lot better off figuring out how to create a more micro-entrepreneurial climate that helps people be self-employed instead.
National-level economic policy - as well as the policies in many states - favour formalisation, which does introduce some efficiencies, but that works only for the top 10%. For the other 90%, formalisation is something they simply can't do fast enough to remain competitive.
If we're going to pat ourselves on the back through metrics like Ease of Doing Business, we should separate that into Ease of Doing Small, Medium and Informal Business first, because these create the most jobs, and have the largest multiplier effect on demand.
In political circles, very few people are working with data, and there isn't a persistent effort to understand the effects of policies. It's more like playing darts, and resetting the board after every round of throws, without keeping score. A promise to change that would help !!
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