A week before the election was announced in Bihar, Chief Minister Nitish Kumar deposited ten thousand rupees each into the accounts of 1 crore 40 lakh women. The total number of voters in Bihar is seven and a half crore. Ten thousand rupees each to the homes of one and a half crore people! One and a half crore women, including their husbands and children, will amount to at least four crore people. A gift from the government to four crore people out of seven and a half crores before the election! Bihar’s public debt is two lakh sixty-six thousand crore rupees. This ‘ten thousand rupees each’ comes amidst these liabilities! 2500 crore through the state government. Narendra Modi, via a video conference before the election, promised 7500 crore rupees to Bihar. For those who allege that people are being converted by giving money; for those who pass laws against it; they cannot find fault in influencing people’s opinions by giving them money! The politics of popular freebie promises (freebie politics) that wins elections even before the election is what India last saw in the Bihar election. Money/freebies played a part in Nitish Kumar’s victory.
In the 2006 assembly election, DMK leader Karunanidhi seriously tested the politics of freebies. The main promise was a colour television for every family. He managed to secure 160 seats. In 2011, Jayalalithaa took it up even better than Karunanidhi. Numerous promises, including mixers and cable connections, brought her 203 seats. When it reached the Aam Aadmi Party in the Delhi area in 2016, it became free electricity, water, and free public transport for women. The BJP, which was generally hesitant about the politics of freebies, arrived in Uttar Pradesh in 2022 and offered free electricity to farmers, scooters for girls, laptops for students, and free gas cylinders for families. Last year, when they arrived in Madhya Pradesh, it turned into an income scheme where 1500 rupees per month was deposited into women’s accounts (Ladki Bahan Yojana). The Pinarayi government is also not far behind in giving out freebies. The politics of freebies brought huge success to all who tried it.
Some call such freebies ‘welfare schemes’. Is there any truth to that? Welfare schemes are actually intended to ensure social justice. Their aim should be to reduce economic inequality. Ration for those below the poverty line, education for the poor, their healthcare, and diligently provided subsidies for the deserving are signs of a culturally advancing society. Are these addressed in the politics of popular freebies? Giving it to everyone equally, regardless of their economic status, is merely an electoral tactic. While welfare schemes are useful for empowerment, popular freebies only aim for political gain (votes). If welfare schemes raise the standard of living, freebies make people dependent. When such freebies become common, a wrong notion that services (electricity, water, bus travel) do not have to be paid for even reaches the public.
Who should bear the burden of these freebie promises? It hasn’t been a year since the Central Government and the Reserve Bank, citing the example of Sri Lanka, firmly stated that state governments should only offer freebie promises after considering their financial status. Yet, this gift package distribution is happening with the Central Government also joining in. States that give out large-scale freebies will also face the situation of having to borrow heavily. Such debt traps will keep away new investors. Due to such freebies, capital expenditures for essential development like healthcare, education, roads, ports, and bridges will be curtailed. In short, such freebies will destroy the real sources of a state’s long-term growth. It is up to the people to decide whether they should be satisfied with such freebies that steal the future of the coming generation.
When freebies are given, control and caution in the use of resources are often lost. For example, when electricity and water become freebies, how carefully will our people be willing to use them? Along with the loss of financial discipline, the reduction of groundwater, environmental harm, and losses for electricity companies will remain. When money or goods are given away for free, the purchasing power in people’s hands naturally increases. If the level of production in the market does not increase according to this rise, it will lead to inflation. Additionally, excessive demands in the market may cause the prices of essential commodities to skyrocket, leading to a situation where people have to spend more money to buy goods than what they received as freebies.
When announcing such freebies, governments should also state how they plan to deal with the debt burdens they create. This is because concealing them hides the state’s financial crises. Recent events in our neighbouring countries bear witness that such crises can lead to the destruction of democracy. When the mind gets stuck on the fleeting justification that voters are benefiting, and people are blessed with continued governance for those who announce freebies, when citizens’ rights have to be received in the vessel of freebies, and when there are governments that buy votes by giving money as gifts, it is democracy that suffers.
