New Delhi, April 8 -- If eyes can be called windows to the soul, then political manifestos are glimpses into the genetic coils of political parties, early indicators of the path waiting to be charted by their leaders. With barely three days to go before India's democratic credentials are tested through a prolonged seven-phase election, lasting more than a month, the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has released its election manifesto. The BJP is the last among all the large national parties to tick this box and it might be tempting to view this perfunctory gesture as its disdain for time-tested electoral protocols. After all, manifestos are supposed to provide the ideological bedrock, the thematic foundation, for any political party's communication with the electorate; it is the one occasion when a party spells out its policy contours, its vision for the future. Coming so close to the first day of polling-11 April -it would seem the BJP's campaign pitch had no use for a manifesto. There are three ways of viewing this. One, the party does not seem serious about its manifesto and promises because it is making no pretence to using the document for its poll campaign. Two, in a country with low literacy rates, the party appears to see manifestos as elitist. Three, and this perhaps hews closer to the truth, the party's campaign pitch and tenor is already synchronous with its manifesto's content, leaving no room for dissonance or discord. But the ultimate test of any manifesto is how it measures up against competition, or competing ideas, on development and democracy. This compels us to compare it with the Congress party's manifesto: BJP's Sankalp Patra versus Congress Will Deliver....