Jobs, India, castes: a graphic visualisation of the words major parties have used in their 2014 manifestos

Manifestos are sometimes dismissed as mere promises from politicians, as easily dismissed as the claims they make at rallies. But they also happen to be actual policy documents, the official, Election Commission-monitored statements of a political party's aims and intentions. Whether frivolous or not, you can't get a more official declaration of a party's promises than a manifesto — which is why it's useful to look at them from every angle possible.

Below are visualisations of the texts in manifestos from all the parties considered by the EC to be 'national' players, aside from the Bahujan Samaj Party, which gives little importance to these documents. All word clouds are courtesy of Wordle, which automatically excludes the most common words of the English language to give you a sense of what the texts are actually saying. It also features word clouds from the Congress and BJP in 2009, to get an idea of how the parties' promises have changed over the years.

Congress 2014