J L Koul Jalali
The Supreme Court of India has directed that all pleas against the practice of freebies offered by political parties to win over voters should be listed before a three judge bench. It had been hearing a PIL and subsequent pleas against freebies before it since July this year. The Apex Court said that the pleas would be listed after four weeks beginning twenty sixth August stating that “Ultimately it appears that the issues raised by the parties require an extensive hearing before any considered order can be passed.” The apex court further stated that the question raised in petitions against the practice of political parties promising pre-election freebies relates to promises made by them as part of their election manifestos or during the poll speeches.
For some time past now,the issue of irrational freebies offered by political parties before elections or in their manifestos has assumed absurd,irrational and even fiscally threatening proportions. Not to mention uneconomic practices of subsidies,cross subsidies and farm loan waivers and other similar populist measures undertaken in our country during recent past few decades,the wave of freebies has taken new forms and again struck in an alarming way. Free electricity has been much used as a freebie with mounting uncleared bills of power generating and distributing companies. Punjab which is already debt ridden has announced up to three hundred units of free power every month. It has blindly followed Delhi state in its irrationally providing free water and power even apart from ignoring the fact that Delhi has high revenues and lesser expenses. Though mostly opposition ruled states have fallen prey to ruinous freebie culture, even BJP ruled Himachal Pradesh has followed the suit which has promised one hundred and twenty five free units of electric power and no water charges in rural areas.
While there can be no two opinions that in our country the central and state governments have to make every effort to pull out the poorest and needy sections of society out of poverty,but it has to be done through welfare measures based on sound economic principles and not through freebies and other populist measures. Also there has to be a clear line of distinction between freebies and welfare measures which are based on sound distributive justice and similar other considerations and not on somehow grabbing power without any fiscal considerations.
To ensure continued overall sustainable economic development and also to create means to remove poverty itself and lift economic development standards,the government has to prioritise and give due and proper weight age and importance to educational, health care,infrastructural and employment generation plans and projects which ensure growth and sustainable development of the country. But even regarding welfare measures, there has to be a clear line of distinction between freebies and welfare measures. In a universally recognised course of economic and political development activity in developed countries,a political party after it assumes power in a democratic set up takes cognisance of its financial and other resources and plans and executes its developmental and other plans accordingly. It has to have a clear aim to spend tax payers money judiciously without frittering it away on unproductive usages.
On the contrary,motivation behind a freebie is devoid of considerations as stated in the foregone para and is based on offering a dole to the prospective voter to motivate him on personal considerations to vote for the party offering the dole.Without any regard for fiscal discipline,the competitive culture of freebies could ultimately lead to providing everything for free in our country where the pride for hard work to achieve noble ends still continues to be suppressed after suffering foreign rule for over a millennium. With Sri Lanka clearly before our eyes, we have not to go far off to see the results of fiscal indiscipline.
Referring to freebie culture raising its head again in the country, the Prime Minister, Narendra Modi cautioned the country that short cut politics based on populist measures could destroy a country. He clearly pointed out that there is no alternative to hard work.
Freebies ultimately lead to danger of financial instability resulting in added liabilities without creation of assets essential for developing country like India on the border lines to turn into an economic super power on its own. These impact our political development also particularly in the context of its development as a leading democracy of the world. Freebies destroy the incentive to work hard for creating assets and encourage the culture to live on the palliatives provided by political parties. Obviously there is a clear need in our country to build up a consensus against it at political level. It also throws a social responsibility on our media to carry out a sustained campaign against the degrading impact of freebies in our country.
The apex court has already ordered listing the issue of freebies before a three judge bench for extensive hearing before any considered order can be passed. The matter had come up before it earlier also and in its judgement in 2013,the apex court had noted that after examining and considering the parameters of Representation of Peoples Act it arrived at a conclusion that promises in election manifesto of political parties cannot be read into section 123 for declaring it to be a corrupt practice. Obviously the issue is far wider this time.
(The author is former IIS Officer/accredited freelance journalist/Producer)
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