It isn’t polling season yet in any state but ‘freebies’ is already the buzzword of election discourse these days. The push-and-pull over whether it is financially prudent for political parties to promise ambitious incentives to voters has reached the next level in the Supreme Court. On Friday, the top court, looking at the “complexities involved”, directed pleas against freebie announcements to be listed before a three-judge bench.
While the term ‘freebie’ has most recently been associated with the Aam Aadmi Party for its electricity and water subsidies in Delhi and Punjab, the party that can claim to have first adopted the strategy is one opposing the very term now. A petition moved by the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) in the Supreme Court says the scope of a “freebie” is very wide and welfare schemes provided by state governments cannot be classified as one.
The party contends that the core of the Dravidian movement ideology is to socio-economically uplift the backward classes and all other oppressed sections of the society. Social welfare schemes, in fact, have been an integral part of Dravidian politics since before Independence.
Periyar’s Self-Respect Movement to MGR’s Social Welfare
The Dravidian model of governance encompasses the fight against upper caste dominance, social reform, and welfare rooted in equity. The movement’s inception can be traced to Periyar’s (as EV Ramaswamy was called) self-respect movement launched in 1922, the bedrock on which the Dravida Kazhagam (DK), and later the DMK, was born.
The self-respect movement encouraged challenging social hierarchies, paved the way for caste-based politics, and sought to implement affirmative action programmes for backward communities, notes former bureaucrat and author Dinesh Narayan in his book The Dravidian Years: Politics and Welfare in Tamil Nadu.
Periyar’s reluctance to let members of the DK contest elections, his radical atheist beliefs, and a few other ideas led to many leaders exiting the party, one of whom was Annadurai, who went on to form the DMK in 1949.
It was not until the 1960s that the DMK saw success in electoral politics. During a period of food crisis in the state, CM Annadurai ordered rice to be given at 1 kg per rupee and strengthened the Public Distribution System — touted as one of the best by renowned economist Jean Dreze — to provide rice, wheat, sugar, and gifts such as sarees and dhotis on Pongal, marking the beginning of welfare schemes in the state.
“It was not a holistic approach, but rather a grant-based approach towards particular sections of people that the government considered to be disadvantaged or in need of support,” notes Narayan in his book.
For 10 years since 1977, MG Ramachandran, who enjoyed a demi-god status in Tamil Nadu, introduced several schemes that benefitted the poor. The most impactful of these was the scaling up of midday nutritious meal scheme in schools, initially introduced by CM Kamaraj in 1956, to cover economically weaker students across the state.
Narayan, in a seminar organised by the Observer Research Foundation in 2018, said that during MGR’s rule, welfare parameters improved tremendously, as evidenced by international studies by the World Bank and many others. This included higher nutrition levels, fall in infant mortality rates, and reduced levels of anaemia among women and children.
The successful scheme did not come without its challenges. “The state had a deficit of Rs 300 crore and a determined MGR had to find nifty ways of funding the project, which were not all kosher. A Chief Minister’s Nutritious Noon Meal Programme Fund was created and donations to it were exempted from income tax. Contributions to it became a pre-requisite for obtaining government clearances and for routine administrative orders,” R Kannan, author of MGR: A Life noted.
The golden era of welfare programmes came to an end with the death of MGR in 1987, after which they became “mere election winning tools”, Narayan writes in The Dravidian Years.
Colour TVs vs Laptops
It was in 2006 that the “freebie” ball truly started rolling with M Karunanidhi’s pre-election announcement of rice at Rs 2 per kg (a drop from Rs 3.5), free colour television, free gas stove for poor households, free electricity for farmers and weavers, and maternity assistance for poor pregnant women.
Although Jayalalithaa pressed the panic button and started announcing freebies one after another, as Narayan put it, the election was DMK’s.
The free colour TV scheme was perhaps one of Karunanidhi’s most criticised freebie. While experts and Opposition said that the scheme would cost Rs 15,000 crore, Karunanidhi refuted the number and reasoned that out of 156 lakh families, assuming 53 lakh were below poverty line and had to be given one TV set costing Rs 2,000 each, the scheme would cost Rs 1,060 crore, a significantly lower amount.
Jayalalithaa later said the 106.4 lakh TV sets distributed by the government cost Rs 3,687 crore from 2006 to 2011 and accused Karunanidhi and his family, which ran the prominent Sun TV network, of benefitting from the scheme as people spent Rs 4,000 crore on cable subscriptions.
A research published in the Oxford University Press’ Quarterly Journal of Economics linked the introduction of television in villages to positive externalities on women’s empowerment. “It concludes that the introduction of cable television is associated with significant decrease in the acceptability of domestic violence, preference for a son and fertility, as well as increases women’s autonomy in the household,” said an article in The News Minute.
In the 2011 elections, Jayalalithaa was quick to unveil her electoral promises of free rice for those under a specific income level under the PDS scheme, free laptops for girls in Class 12 and college (the whole cost of the project was Rs 10,200 crore), free goats, milch cows, fans, and mixer-grinders.
Emerging victorious, Jayalalithaa continued announcing schemes throughout her rule from 2011 to 2016. The ‘Amma Unavagam’ (Amma canteen) scheme, launched in 2013, was a runaway hit. The canteens sold idlis, Pongal, sambar rice and curd rice at highly subsidised rates and commendable quality. The scheme also provided employment to women from self-help groups.
Throughout this period, political observers noted that Jayalalithaa grew increasingly inaccessible. While her health and legal controversies were the main reasons behind this, Narayan noted that her belief in social reform or the Dravidian ideology had gone down and she viewed each action as an opportunity to win elections.
Faulting the Freebies
Prime Minister Narendra Modi, on July 16, cautioned against the culture of distributing freebies. Speaking at the inauguration of Budelkhand Expressway in Uttar Pradesh, Modi said the “revdi culture” would take the new India towards darkness.
“There are some governments which are indulging in revdi culture to secure votes, while the double engine government is working towards creating new expressways and rail routes,” Modi said.
The Centre in a hearing on August 11 suggested that the Supreme Court constitute an 11-member committee to look into the issue of freebies. “This freebie culture has been elevated to the level of art and now elections are only fought on the ground. If freebies are considered to be for the welfare of the people, it will lead to disaster,” Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, appearing for the Centre, told the court.
Manisha Priyam, Associate Professor, National University of Education Planning and Administration (NUEPA), opined that giving incentives before elections is not a good practice and governments should focus on long-term policy making. “Offering free rides is a clear freebie. That is looking at women as a vote bank. Certainly not all women need free rides,” she told The Hindu.
Tamil Nadu Chief Minister MK Stalin, who announced free bus travel for women when he came to power in 2021, said the initiative should not be confined to a narrow aspect of freebies because it is an “economic revolution”.
“Due to this scheme, the families (of the beneficiaries) see 8-12% savings in their income which I would call an economic revolution,” he said.
Tamil Nadu Finance Minister Palanivel Thiagarajan reserved a more nuanced criticism of freebies during a conversation with data scientist RS Nilakantan in 2021. He said that while noon meal schemes, marriage assistance, free laptops and bicycles for students are “investments in the future”, giving free cows and goats are “simply too complicated, requiring too many checks and balances to be practically executable”.
Even if the economic aspect of implementing the schemes does not pan out fully in favour of the government, it comes without any doubt that “freebies” make lives easier for the poorer sections of society. Economist Jayati Ghosh raised an important point by saying that the word “freebies” indicates the class position of those who use it.
“In most other countries, universal access to reasonable quality goods and services that constitute ‘basic needs’ is seen as the responsibility of the state, not as ‘freebies’,” Ghosh was quoted as saying by news agency PTI.
If the political process makes political parties respond to such needs, these should not be seen as freebies, the economist said, adding that the poor in India, in fact, pay a larger share of their income in taxes than the rich because of the dominance of indirect taxes in tax collection.
“So they are more than entitled to receive their basic needs,” Ghosh said.
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