The Voters’ Gambit

While hearing a case on the right to shelter for the homeless, a Supreme Court bench made comments about freebies, which are now a mainstay of Indian elections and have shown the ability to decide who wins. The court wondered whether freebies would not lead to a “class of parasites” and people not wanting to work, resulting in a shortage of labour. An example it gave was the hugely successful Ladki Bahin scheme announced just before the Assembly elections of Maharashtra. It was a freebie that paid handsome dividends in returning the ruling coalition back to power.

The voter does not really care how he gets benefits so long as he gets them. Why then is he so impervious to regular government programmes and so receptive to the ones that are linked to elections? Because he knows the ones that really reach him. The Ladki Bahin scheme’s success was not in the announcement but in how workers of political parties went out in campaign mode to ensure that eligible women got the promised amount. It is how all government programmes ought to function—where all citizens, including the illiterate and the poor, get what is on paper. They usually don’t because the only way to negotiate it is through middle men who understand the system. Election freebies are an exception because now it is not a doling out but a transaction. It becomes the necessity of the politician to deliver it otherwise he will not get the vote and lose. If the voter is a ‘parasite’ then it is because he has been leeched out of what was sanctioned in his name for a long time. Now, he has understood how to play the game with the only advantage he has — of the vote.

A freebie is a bad idea because the government takes it out of taxes that others are paying. It is, however, not the only bad economics at play and is just another line item of a leaky state. Provide decent social security and freebies won’t have the outsized influence it presently has.

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