With election round the corner, there is no dearth of political gymnastics. With a staggering 300 million poor people in India, in the realm of welfare politics, advocacy of the idea of freebies, handouts, sops, doles and the like has become insatiable. Election freebies have occupied prominent places in election manifestos and the focus on good governance has taken a back seat. The passage from a manifesto to a movement has been missing in the light of equality, social justice and inclusive development. The narratives on vikas (development) have been grossly downplayed.

Election perks are generating public debt and long-term economic and political consequences which are ultimately going to be grave. Perennially, India’s elections and the politics of development have been mired in short-lived programmes, lack of mission, flimsy execution and fragile assessment. The properties – participation, equity and inclusiveness, accountability, responsiveness and law – of good governance from the United Nations have been undermined.

Elections are the festivals of democracy. Many times, election freebies are meant to curb social apathy rather than to achieve financial gains, private assets and major vote pluralities. To woo the voters, there have been inorganic competitions among political parties in dispensing incentives through public distribution system (PDS) in various states.

There is a slew of sops like Janmabhoomi in Andhra Pradesh; Krushak Assistance for Livelihood and Income Augmentation and Peoples Empowerment – Enabling Transparency and Accountability of Odisha Initiatives in Odisha; Raithu Bandhu for farmers’ development in Telangana; power subsidy in Delhi; farmer loan waiver by the Ashok Gehlot government on the first day of its office in Rajasthan; Kanyashree scheme for girls in West Bengal; Rs 1 per kg, Atal Amrit Abhiyan scheme for healthcare facility, one tola gold to brides, Rs 25,000 to widows in Assam. The State government in Tamil Nadu had provided subsidised food through Amma canteens before the state’s 2016 election. In the last state election in Karnataka, Congress promised smart phones to students whereas the BJP assured free smartphones to women from BPL families.

The BJP government in Gujarat has promised to waive rural electricity bills to the tune of Rs 650 crore. The Congress government in Madhya Pradesh has promised the moon even though the state government had a debt of Rs 1,87,637 crore as on 31 March 2018. The party has a manifesto of 112 pages with 973 promises titled Vachan Patra. The party vanquished the BJP, stressing on farmers’ distress in three Hindi heartland states – Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh. Freebies and sops are going to spiral fiscal nightmarish in debt-ridden Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh. The Madras High Court has attempted to restrict excess amount of free rice to all sections of the people. It has caused huge loss to the state exchequer and made people lazy.

Sops and incentives are raining down in the election year. However, it is apparent that credibility, sustainability and social audit of programmes have gone haywire and majority of the programmes have been reduced to poll propaganda. The space for good governance has gradually shrunk as if India is in election mode all the time. Sometimes it happens in the name of caste upliftment and sometimes it is for gender and economic parity. Many governmental progarmmes are politicised and placed in election manifestoes.

Good governance for empowering citizens is all about formulating, executing and assessing developmental programmes. However, the magnitude of political propaganda and lack of social audit has made number of developmental programmes a futile exercise. In contrast, last year there was an alleged starvation death of 58-year-old Savitri Devi in Giridih district of Jharkhand. She was denied food and starved to death because of non-availability of a ration card.

Recently, the government at the Centre unveiled a raft of budget sweeteners for farmers, the middle class and even cows. In this poll season, Union Food Minister Ram Vilas Paswan has already announced that the prices of grains supplied through the PDS would not be increased till June 2019. Congress president Rahul Gandhi has taken the path of welfare politics, in what is a throwback to Indira Gandhi’s ‘Garibi hatao, desh bachao’ slogan just before the 1971 elections. After the discourse on national farm loan waiver, now Rahul has offered a minimum income guarantee for the country’s poor. To many political analysts, Rs 60,000 crore farm loan waiver in 2008 had a major bearing on the UPA’s return to power in 2009. Congress which ruled India for several years is known for its massive subsidies, rural employment guarantee programmes and a cheap food distribution scheme.

To some, sops enhance the capabilities of people. So far as welfare economics and reforms are concerned, according to a report by UNDP and the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative in September 2018, India’s poverty rate has been halved to 28 per cent in the decade up to 2015-16, with 271 million moving out of poverty. However, various schemes should go for social audit before these get corrupted and reduced to political misinformation.

The responsibility to achieve good governance rests on the election commission, political parties and civic society.

(The writer is an Assistant Professor with Symbiosis Institute of Media and Communication, Symbiosis International [Deemed University], Pune)