Brij Bhardwaj
Politics of freebies to attract voters has been played by political parties in India for a long time. To start with it was started by offering liquor and food before voting day. Some changed it to distribution of cash . The Election Commission made it difficult by putting in place effective measures to check it and seized a lot of cash from political agents. Not to be deterred , political parties started distributing pressure cookers and other goodies including lap tops and mobile phones.
The Aam Aadmi Party took it a step further, as instead of distributing goodies before the polls it started promising favours to be given after elections. It included free power and water for small consumers, free bus travel for women and allowance for unemployed. Question that arises is how will it help. As the current financial position of States is far from healthy. Majority of them have huge deficit and are unable to pay for power supplied and consumed or water to Electricity boards and other undertakings providing services to them.
If States run deficits at some stage it will be passed on to Centre, If all act irresponsibly and start running deficits and are unable to manage within the income generated, there will be no option to but to print more money which will lead to inflation and currency will come under pressure and start losing value in international markets.
This is not imagination as we have witnessed it in our neighbourhood in Sri Lanka. A stage will come where deficit between our exports and imports will become so large that we would have no foreign exchange to buy essential items like crude oil and medicines. Inflation will also make prices of essential items so high that forget the poor, even middle class will not be able to buy them. The prudent policy is that we should balance our income and expenditure and also our exports and imports.
This is essential for a healthy economy. Political parties need to observe restraint while making election promises. If they act irresponsibly they will have to pay a price in future as they will not be able to fulfil promises and voters will punish them when they go to them during next polls. Political promises have to be realistic and in the process politicians should not lose the plot.
Recently Aam Aadmi Party has taken the lead in making offers like free power, water and free travel for some. It plans to add benefits like unemployment allowance and good education without charging. It does not explain from where funds will come. It could be done to a some extent in Union Territory which is a surplus budget state. It does not explain how it will do it in Punjab where there is huge debt.
In addition, it is spending huge sums on advertising not only in Delhi but also in States where it hopes to do well. Delhi advertising budget is more than budget of many large states. The best example was money spent on advertisement scheme to convert agriculture waste into manure. While farmers got few lakhs as subsidy for implementing it ,over hundred crores were spent on publicising it.
Delhi Government alone is not guilty of wasting funds on publicity and advertising but many states are advertising on electronic channels. What we need is schemes for unemployed in freebies. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has warned against culture of freebies and there is urgent need to check the same. Any freebies may look attractive to start with but you pay for it when indirect taxes are levied to make up for deficit.. India needs productive schemes to make Indian economy strong and not freebies.
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