The Political Freebies and the Remedy

It is learnt that a public interest litigation was filed in the Supreme Court, by advocate Ashwini Kumar Upadhyay, who sought a direction for issuance of stringent guidelines to deregister errant political parties and seize their election symbols for offering irrational freebies ahead of polls. He added that India could be soon on its way to becoming Sri Lanka if freebies were not controlled.

In this connection, a bench of the Supreme Court comprising justices Krishna Murari and Hima Kohli and headed by the CJI N. V. Ramana, hearing the case on Tuesday, 26th July 2022, was surprised at the helplessness expressed by the Election Commission of India (ECI) in controlling the serious problem of the freebies and sought to know from the Finance Commission (FC) if revenue allocation to states can take into account unnecessary expenditures on hand outs.

“God save the Election Commission of India if it’s saying that we can’t do anything when the electorates are sought to be bribed through freebies...We are suggesting that this (freebies) has to be controlled. How it is going to be done needs to be examined.” These is the approximate wording of the remarks by the SCI.

The twist in this case is that the Union Government has pushed the responsibility to the Election Commission of India and the ECI has pushed that responsibility to the Electorate i.e. the voters.

Now let us see what the FC suggests to the SCI on this issue. It is not easy to tackle this nuisance, as putting the difference between the reasonable promises and the irrational freebies into the rules will be a tricky matter. 

 

I have a three tiers solution for this nuisance. It is a part of my suggestions on doing Redevelopment of Our Democracy.

  • Eliminate all political parties and let all candidates be independent persons only, in all elections.
  • Let there be more than one representatives elected from each and all constituencies. I suggest 6 to 8 representatives, half number of them male and half number of them female, from each and all constituencies. I describe that as 'widening the base of representation'. That will make the ugly competition among them redundant. It is possible to enlarge the size of all constituencies and thereby keep the total number of the representatives within a reasonable limit.
  • Let there be a few Associations of the People for particular interest, which will have equal and guaranteed representation in the Houses. That will be one hope for the responsible representation. 

(Date - 2022.07.27.)

 

The 1st Extension --

It is further learnt that a bench of the Supreme Court, led by Chief Justice Mr. N. V. Ramana has asserted that a distinction should be drawn between welfare measures and freebies and that all freebies cannot be couched as welfare schemes. The Supreme Court is known to have observed that there must be some financial discipline for tackling the serious issue of the hand- outs as electoral promises and that a debate should be initiated to assess its impact on the economy of a state and tax payers.

As far as the financial discipline is concerned, the readers and the panel of the experts and the SC may take a clue from the state of affairs narrated on a separate page

I came to know about a suggestion of forming the tax-payers' organization and subjecting the schemes of expenses to its approval. This is a good suggestion. But it is of the nature of becoming a body parallel to the Council of Ministers and the legislature too. So it cannot be recommended under the present setup. However, I have suggested for having such Associations of the People for channelizing their representatives for direct membership of the legislature. I have mentioned about this in the 3rd bulleted paragraph above. That is a part of the theme of doing Redevelopment of Our Democracy. 

If the promises given by the ministers is a matter to worry, some rules or a Code of Conduct could be formulated for them. All such promises which are not approved by the Council of Ministers may be treated as the break of the rule or the Code of Conduct, thereby making the minister liable for termination of his/her ministership. I further state that the schemes which require any public loan should be banned by the law, since the exchequer is crippling under the burden of the interest on the public debt. You may read the details on a the same page referred to above for the financial discipline. 

 

As far as the election promises for the freebies are concerned, it is really difficult to restrict those by way of the rules. Yet we have some hope. I cannot view any suitable method for that purpose, under the present setup. My most of the suggestions are for doing a change in the setup. I am sure that those will turn effective for the intended purpose. Yet the doubt remains as how many people will be ready and extend their active support for doing the change.
(Date - 2022.08.12.)


Last updated on 2022.08.12. (First uploaded on 2022.07.27.)


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