Before attempting to regulate manifesto promises,courts and EC must spell out what is inappropriate. Tamil Nadus experience can serve as a guide.
I like to be in America,ok by me in America,everything is free in America. So go the lyrics of a late 1950s song by Trini Lopez. If Lopez were to sing the song again today,he might well say,I like to be in Tamil Nadu,everything is free in Tamil Nadu.
Naturally,there have been competitive promises of freebies from the two arch rivals,the AIADMK and DMK,since then,with J. Jayalalithaa promising a scheme for the distribution of free mixer-grinders in her party manifesto in the 2011 elections and proceeding to implement it after winning.
It is this competitive promise of freebies that went to the Supreme Court,thanks to a PIL by advocate S. Subramaniam Balaji.The SC bench held that the freebies promised by political parties in their manifestos did disturb the level playing field,and directed the Election Commission to frame guidelines on their contents. Political parties have predictably closed ranks and opposed any move to curb promises of freebies.
The issue may hinge on what a freebie is,what constitutes a social security net,and defining the thin line that separates the two. It is not without irony that the issue before the SC had its genesis in Tamil Nadu and the two Dravidian parties,which should be recognised as role models as far as freebies are concerned. To understand the freebie culture in Tamil Nadu,one would need to understand the rise of the Dravidian political parties.
In 1967,the DMK,in its state assembly manifesto,promised three measures of rice at Re 1 (a measure was approximately equal to 1.5 kg). This promise came at a time when the country was facing severe food shortages. Riding on that one promise,supported by the sentiments fostered by the anti-Hindi agitation two years earlier,the DMK dislodged the Congress permanently from power in the state.
Since then,the two Dravidian parties have assiduously injected liberal doses of freebies,either in their election manifestos or during their tenure in government. So much so that the social sector accounts for more than a third of the annual state budget. For the current fiscal,it stands at 37 per cent and freebies are a big chunk. But not all the expenditure can be called a drain on the exchequer,as Balaji termed the distribution of freebies like television sets and mixer-grinders.
In fact,most schemes involving free distribution of some item or the other that successive Tamil Nadu governments have implemented have to be considered a sort of social security net or an indirect contribution to the human development index (HDI). An analysis of education-related freebie schemes illustrates the HDI-freebie linkage.
For instance,take the distribution of free bicycles to students of Class XI and XII,which Jayalalithaa first introduced in 2003. The rationale was that girl students,especially in rural areas,dropped out merely because of the distance they had to travel from home to the nearest government higher secondary school. What started as an initiative to provide incentives to girl students to not drop out was subsequently expanded to include boys. The AIADMK was innovative enough to come up with this scheme as successive governments had already taken care of several other aspects of school education. The state has been distributing free-of-cost textbooks and uniforms for government school students.
Schemes like granting Rs 500 a year for girls belonging to SC/ ST and most backward classes studying in Class III to V and Rs 1,000 to those in Class VI to VIII,or free bus passes to all students,have undoubtedly contributed to the increased level of education in the state,especially among girls. Free sanitary napkins are distributed to girls studying in rural schools. How many outside Tamil Nadu even know that there is a scheme under which a girl belonging to the BPL category can get marriage assistance of Rs 20,000,and another under which she can get one or two grams of gold for her mangalsutra? These are linked to her educational qualifications. It may be a freebie,but by fixing a minimum educational qualification of 10th standard,it is an added incentive for parents to educate the girl at least upto that level.
One cannot deny that there are leakages and even mismanagement or outright corruption in many such schemes. Some of them are debatable. Schemes like free power supply to agricultural pump sets have always been subject to criticism. But that cannot be used as an argument for scrapping freebies altogether. In a state where land holdings are mostly small and irrigation is subject to the vagaries of monsoon and the attitude of the incumbent government in Karnataka,the free power scheme has helped maintain agricultural productivity well above the national average.
Given that freebies have historically impacted the socio-economic quality of life,it was just a short step to offering what should be considered non-essential items like the two Dravidian parties did by promising television sets and mixer-grinders. It is this distinction that the SC,EC and political parties have to keep in mind when debating whether freebies are tantamount to bribing the voter. If there is a socio-economic benefit to society at large,as has been the case with many of the schemes introduced over the years,then it should not be considered a freebie,but a social security net.
The writer teaches at the Asian College of Journalism,Chennai
