An old chestnut made an appearance in national political discourse this week.
In 2006, S Subramaniam Balaji approached the Madurai Bench of the High Court of Madras against the pre-poll promise of freebies – such as free television sets. The petition was dismissed and Balaji filed an appeal before the Supreme Court. Five years later, in 2011, in the next assembly election, once again freebies including grinders, laptops, free rice and free cattle were announced.
In July 2013, the Supreme Court while disposing the petition observed that freebies influence all people and "shakes the root of free and fair elections to a large degree." It directed the Election Commission to frame guidelines for a model code of conduct in consultation with all the recognized political parties. The commission consulted parties and in April 2015 issued the 'Model Code of Conduct for the Guidance of the Political Parties and Candidates'. The parade of elections and freebies has continued.
This week, nearly a decade later, the quest to contain the cult of freebies was back in the courts. The Supreme Court was petitioned to intervene once again on the very same issue by Ashwini Upadhyay who is a lawyer and a member of the BJP – which incidentally has promised pre-poll freebies in the past . Upadhyay contended that the distribution of freebies amounted to bribery. The Court asked the Centre to consult the Finance Commission if the promise of "irrational freebies" during polls could be curbed.
The context and the content of the oral directive raised the hackles of the parties in the opposition. In a curious coincidence just a week earlier the Prime Minister had launched a tirade against the 'revadi' aka freebie culture in politics. Parties were quick to raise the operative and philosophical question. P Thiaga Rajan, Tamil Nadu's combative finance minister, took to Twitter. He asked who decides "what is a Freebie as against an essential service, who decides what is irrational" and added "Does the Constitution of India envision the Judiciary as the chaperone of the voter – vote-seeker relationship?"
The phrase freebie owes its etymology to 1920s American politics. What is a freebie, whose money is it anyway? Freebie politics is effectively electoral insurance paid for with taxpayer monies. What a freebie is depends on who is asking, where and when. History shows that what is dubbed a freebie today morphs into an entitlement, a national programme a few years later.
The mid-day meal scheme started by K Kamaraj and expanded by MG Ramachandran in 1982 was first mocked by Delhi only to be adopted as a national programme a decade later. NT Rama Rao's promise of rice at Rs 2 per kg is the original avatar of the current day National Food Security Programme. Telangana's Rythu Bandhu and Odisha's Kalia were fore-runners of the PM Kisan Samman Nidhi. The free medicines scheme launched in Tamil Nadu is the template for a national scheme.
However, not every freebie evolves into an ideal. An instructive example of freebie turning disastrous is the free power regime pioneered by the Akali Dal in the nineties. The free power regimes is a live threat to India's energy and economic security. No revenue is collected for a fifth of the power distributed, and State Discoms are losing over Rs 75000 crore a year -- 28 of them are loss-making and owe generating entities over Rs 1.09 lakh crore.
Freebies are fashioned at the intersection of political and administrative compulsions to woo voters from islands of hostility and denial. Faced with inability to resolve issues haunting people the political class leans on Robinhood politics and flyover economics -- address the consequences even if causes remain unattended. The rise in demand for MGNREGS for instance reflects the failure of states to improve the ecosystem for job creation.
The necessity to corral the temptations of parties to roll out freebies is indisputable --given the fallout visible in the gaps in basic services of policing, education and health care. The cost of sops is beggaring state budgets. Indeed, a recent note on state finances published by the RBI warns, "New sources of risks have emerged in the form of rising expenditure on non-merit freebies, expanding contingent liabilities, and the ballooning overdue of DISCOMs."
States are well within their rights to induct new programmes but guardrails are needed to align spend of public monies with public purpose. This calls for fixing the gaps in design, execution and accountability. The election commission could mandate that the manifesto informs voters what is the problem being solved, what it will cost taxpayers and where the additional moolah will come from. The finance commission could devise a mechanism to limit expenditure on populist schemes via the FRBM Act -- at the very least a safeguard which ensures basic public services are not starved. A mandate for bi-annual outcome reports on schemes could enhance audit and public accountability.
All of this requires eternal vigilance on the part of the voting class. Finally in a democracy the power to block or allow the march of freebies rests with the voters.
Shankkar Aiyar is the author of The Gated Republic, Aadhaar: A Biometric History of India's 12 Digit Revolution, and Accidental India. He can be reached at shankkar.aiyar@gmail.com.