Freebies: It’s not courts’ call
It is not the remit of the judiciary to suggest the making of laws to curb the runaway practice in Indian democracy of offering freebies for votes by political parties. Well-intentioned the Chief Justice may have been in trying to work out a formula on bringing some sort of curbs on the promise of freebies as a vote-catching strategy that has been embedded in the political scene for at least 50 years out of 61 years since the first general elections were held. With the outstanding debt of states being somewhere in the region of 25 per cent of GDP from a high of about 31 per cent of GDP, the capacity to sustain freebies — besides giving power to the poor, MGNREGA, agricultural subsidies, PDS expenditure and school meal schemes that are clearly warranted in a country with an extreme poverty level of around 30 per cent with less than Rs 100 a day to spend — has gone down. The leading question the judiciary may have entertained is whether any political party would agree to curbs on freebies ahead of polls.
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