Opinion Congress’ promised grain ration goes against its claim of making people ‘atmanirbhar’

In 2019, Prime Minister Narendra Modi swept the Lok Sabha polls on the back of his government’s welfare schemes for building rural homes, toilets and roads, providing access to banking, electricity and LPG connections, and the Rs 6,000 annual cash transfer to landholding farmers. In 2024, the scheme that is seemingly a big draw among voters is the one giving 5 kg of free rice or wheat to about 813.5 million persons. Proof of its impact on the ground is the Congress, more than midway through the ongoing elections, promising to double the free ration quota for the “poor” among the scheme’s beneficiaries.

But schemes are only as good as their implementation. Just as the focused execution and near saturation coverage of the earlier flagship programmes helped cultivate a pro-poor image for Modi nationally during his first term, the free grain scheme delivered during the Covid crisis. Till the early 2000s, the southern states were largely the ones with reasonably well-functioning public distribution systems (PDS). By around 2015-16, they were joined by the likes of Chhattisgarh, Odisha, Madhya Pradesh and West Bengal. But the Covid period saw NFSA beneficiaries even in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Jharkhand actually receiving free grain. The ruling party’s victory in the 2022 Assembly elections in UP was widely attributed to the Modi-Yogi Adityanath “double-engine” government’s efforts at not just expanding the reach of the PDS, but also ensuring last-mile delivery of grain to eligible households.

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The Congress’s promised grain ration of 10 kg/person/month is notable not only for the additional fiscal cost it would entail (even if restricted to the “poor”). It goes contrary to party general secretary Priyanka Gandhi’s recent pronouncement that government policies should aim at making people “atmanirbhar” (self-reliant), not “nirbhar” (dependent). At a public rally, she asked the crowd to choose between free 5-kg ration and employment that will earn them an independent income. The apparent about-turn and competitive free grain offer is, perhaps, also reflective of a deeper political economy malaise. Governments find it more expedient to deliver freebies, whether in kind or as direct cash transfers, than investing in public education, healthcare, irrigation or agricultural research and extension that take time to yield results. It doesn’t help that voters are also sceptical about state capacity and hence increasingly transactional and short-termist.