AA Edit | States in crisis as parties pledge freebies for votes
Give a man a fish and you provide him a meal but teach him how to fish and you give him a livelihood, goes a saying. As another election season is upon us, it only goes to show how far India is removed from the ideal of creating livelihoods through jobs for all its people in the working age group.
In this highly competitive season of ladling out promises of freebies to win votes, each political party tries to outdo rivals by offering to spend freely from taxpayers’ money in handing out incentives that may drain the exchequer but may help garner votes for the netas and their parties.
As Jammu & Kashmir prepares to go to the polls in a historic election 10 years after the last one, the competition for wooing the voters with incentives is fierce. With the Congress promising women Rs 3,000 a month besides rations and a phenomenal Rs 25 lakh health cover, the BJP is inclined to put it all together in a financial package akin to a basic household expenses cover of Rs 18,000 a month to be directly transferred to the eldest woman of a household.
Governments that are doling out incentives aimed at empowering women are moving rapidly towards a financial crisis with some states like Himachal Pradesh struggling even to pay government staff their salaries at the beginning of a month.
Such a prospect of financial bankruptcy of states that are already swimming against the tide with monthly interest payments running into thousands of crores, however, seems to mean nothing to the netas as they bid for the power to run the states, wooing voters by promising the moon.
As a class, politicians seem impervious to the cost-of-living crisis that the middle class downwards face as sticky inflation rises and rules. It has been pointed out that the gross fiscal deficit of the states is somewhere in the region of Rs 9.4 lakh crores now, having risen to that humongous figure from Rs 3.2 lakh crores in the last 10 years.
The delivery of free electricity, with a ceiling of around 200 units that may define a lower middle family’s consumption in a month, has left most state electricity boards with gaping deficits. Free bus rides for women besides a basic payment per month to them are aimed at ideals like women’s empowerment, but they come with a cost.
Of course, everything adds more burden to the deficit in state finances. Throw in all loss-making state ventures and the debt of every Indian adds up to just under $2,000 per person in the $2.8 trillion national debt (Central as well as of states, municipalities, public sector institutions and social security funds) as computed at the end of 2022.
The point is this competitive culture of freebies for votes is a political phenomenon that is intrinsically dishonest. That all parties are guilty of it absolves none in this deceptive practice of cash and incentives for votes. It may be practised around the world, but it seems to be done with a competitive zeal in India regardless of the effect on public finances.
Arguing over delivered and undelivered poll promises will get people nowhere. The courts too periodically comment on the freebie culture, but there is no mechanism to curb the politician from proclaiming a passage to the promised land so he can rule, no matter what effect freebies have on the collective wealth of a state.