The Freebies Fetish

FOR YEARS IN our country, we have used the vote as the primary driver of everything we do. Our politics, our policies, our actions, and sometimes our inaction, are all geared towards the vote. What kind of democracy then do we talk about if it is a democracy built on some form of bribing, where you either appease religion, you appease the caste system, you appease income strata, and then pretend that people have voted you to power just because of how good you are and how good your vision for this country is?

I have never understood why our country cannot absolve itself of this infection called vote-bank politics. Adjunct to this vote-bank politics is this pernicious desire to continue offering freebies to people who either don’t deserve them or, if they do, must be forced to work. We cannot have a society that believes it is its right to have things free just because it is part of a certain income strata.

What kind of progress can we then instil in our country if people are given things for free and they never have to work for them? It is the same situation where the comparison is between teaching a man how to fish or just give him fish for free. For far too long we have done the latter.

We have allowed this malaise to set into our country. I was staggered to discover that a state like Odisha, which is mineral-rich and has had a long history of impoverishment, now decided to apportion `55,000 crore towards women. We have seen that happen in Maharashtra, Haryana, and Delhi, and sometimes we wonder if these votes are actually for development or votes that have been purchased. Because this is a form of bribery if nothing else. And who is paying for all of this? You and I, the taxpayer.

Does it pinch? Of course, it pinches. And I’m not here to get into a debate about certain sections of our society which are deprived and therefore must be supported. We have done enough of this support for far too long. We have free education, we have free healthcare, and yet we want to provide rations. I can understand a situation where during Covid-19 we continued to provide rations to families that were stricken, and families that were out of work. But today, more and more people are going back to their villages because they can live a healthy life on the freebies being promised.

We can’t keep talking about direct benefit transfer when actually the only person it hurts is the beneficiary of that direct benefit transfer. Because there will come a time when we will have a population that just doesn’t want to work, and that believes it is entitled to free things. We had a situation in Karnataka, and we have had a situation in Delhi, where women are allowed to ride buses for free. Why should that happen? Why should people not pay for the services they use? Apart from the disease this free business causes, what you are also creating is a society that has scant regard for the services they are now being offered.

Because when something is offered to you for free, you don’t really care. You don’t care about its value, you don’t care about its purpose, and you certainly don’t care about using it judiciously and efficiently.

I believe the time has come for India and Indians, for political parties, across party lines and ideologies, to stop this nonsense. Because if we don’t stop it now, we will only create a wider chasm.

You will create more ‘freedom’ fighters who will fight for anything that is free. And that is something India can ill afford. Where we must pump in money, we are not pumping in money. We must pump money into education, both at the primary and the secondary levels. We must pump money into healthcare. We must pump money into innovation. We must support entrepreneurs. But we are not doing all of that.

We are just giving people free money. This situation is disastrous for any society, let alone India. We can’t say we are a land of entrepreneurs and yet have this despicable situation where people are being given money for no rhyme or reason. This has to stop. If the courts need to intervene, they must, or perhaps civil society should.

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