Time to break the vicious cycle of freebies – Firstpost

Freebies have become the new opium of the masses. Political parties compete to provide them, outbidding each other, as though the voters are cannon fodder for the highest giver in a political auction where the biggest prize—the winning of elections—is reserved not for the beneficiaries but the donor.

The practice, which Prime Minister (PM) Modi calls the giving of ‘revdis’, is not new. It has had political currency ever since democratic elections have been held in India, because it is the adharma of politicians to woo the masses by making promises that they know they may not be able to fulfil. But the blatancy is new. Earlier, the largesse promised by political parties used to have some semblance of financial prudence. Now, financial viability is no longer a consideration. The idea is to somehow, anyhow, win the election, whether there is—or will—be money to fulfil the promises that rain down like a torrential shower in the monsoons.

Freebies proliferate when the ability of the state to genuinely fulfil the enduring needs of citizens, seriously shrinks or becomes non-existent. In such a situation, freebies are the only way to camouflage the institutional failure of democratically elected governments for good governance. Equally, freebies are based on the assumption that the gullibility of voters is infinitely elastic. Or, that they lack the faculty to make a realistic assessment of the sustainability of promises made by cynical politicians. Or, worse, that they are basically greedy: they have no sense of discrimination, and will blindly vote for that party which promises the most revdis. Or, finally, that the voters suffer from congenital amnesia: once they have been lured to vote for whichever party promises the maximum freebies, they will not ask for their implementation, and be ready, by the time of the next elections, to be fooled again.

Such a situation presents a real crisis for the credibility of the state, the functioning of democracy, the quality of governance, and the esteem in which politicians hold the public. Governance suffers because palliatives become substitutes for the imperative foundational transformation of the system. Governance also suffers because winning elections through such palliatives promotes—and validates—policy stasis.  Why change the grossly inadequate policy regimen when wild promises can keep at bay citizen’s pressures to change it?

The functioning of democracy suffers because citizens dependent on freebies—whether these actually fructify or not—lose the impetus to protest at the absence of urgently required systemic reforms.  In time, they are also unable to resist the temptation of temporary relief in place of enduring change.  Freebies nurture a syndrome of dependence on the ‘mai-baap sarkar’, akin to the craving for a hit of a drug addict.

India’s biggest opium factory is located at Ghazipur, on the Ganga, at the border of UP and Bihar.  Visitors to it are witness to a strange scene: dozens of monkeys sit around outside in a drugged state. For years they have been drinking the waste water emitted by the factory. This contains traces of opium.  Over time they become addicts, and drink only this water, asking for nothing else, and capable of nothing more.

Freebies thus militate against the creation of productive citizens who have the skill sets and the opportunities to live a better life, rather than just depend on the duplicitous largesse of the state. This argument should not be interpreted to be against the merits of a welfare state.  In developed and developing countries—especially those like India where there is unacceptable poverty and economic and social inequality—the need for affirmative action—which may have an element of freebies—is often justified.  However, such affirmative action is done in a planned manner as part of calibrated policy.  But freebies represent welfarism gone anarchic, the complete abdication of policy-making, and abandonment of fiscal responsibility. The rulers don’t care whether their cynical generosity is supported by available funds, or whether such misanthropic promises will run the treasury dry. Nor are they concerned about the long-term consequences of such myopic decision making dictated solely for imminent political advantage.

The MNREGA scheme is a good example to consider in this context.  It was conceived for the well-intentioned reason of providing immediate relief to those at the very bottom of the economic pyramid below the poverty line.  However, those who benefitted from it, did not learn any new skills, and became solely dependent on what was meant as a short-term measure to ameliorate their pitiable condition.  The current government when it came to power in 2014 was against such a policy, but continued it, and the scheme became absolutely necessary during Covid.

However, there is good reason to ask whether schemes like MNREGA can be continued in perpetuity without foundational changes in the economy—especially agriculture—by which people can move beyond doles to becoming income earning entities.  The same logic applies to the present policy of providing as many as 80 crore people free rations.  This too was supposed to be a short-term measure but has now been indefinitely continued. Can it be a substitute for the long-awaited structural reforms in the economy that ensure that the poor are able—at the very least—to afford three meals a day?

The proliferating policy of giving freebies is a vicious circle: because freebies are given, structural reform of the economy does not take place; and because such essential reform does not take place, freebies are continued to be given. The need now is to short circuit this vicious cycle. Who will do so, when some election or the other is always around the corner?

Ultimately, only the voters can. I have heard many say that instead of freebies, what they really want is an improvement in governance, and enduring change to free them from the endless trap of poverty and deprivation they are caught in.

The author is a former diplomat, an author and a politician. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views.