Delhi was recently found to have the most poisonous air of any city in the world, but instead of taking this seriously, our political leaders and their spokesmen immediately started blaming each other. (Express photo by Gajendra Yadav)
Nov 24, 2024 08:08 IST First published on: Nov 24, 2024 at 02:40 IST
Such a shame that elections in Maharashtra and Jharkhand consumed our interest for most of last week. Then came the sensational news that Gautam Adani and his conglomerate have been indicted for bribery and corruption by an American court. The consequence of all this was that what happened in Karnataka went almost unnoticed. For a few brief moments, news channels reported that the price of healthcare in government hospitals has doubled, and that this could be because so much money is being spent on the Congress Party’s five guarantees. These include free travel for women, monthly pocket money, cheap domestic gas and more.
Rahul Gandhi is so proud of these guarantees that he came to Maharashtra to boast about them and to promise that if a Congress government came to power in the state, the monthly pocket money that women are getting will be doubled from Rs 1,500 to Rs 3,000. Reckless support for a reckless scheme that could someday soon bring Maharashtra to the edge of bankruptcy as Karnataka now seems to be and Himachal already is. The Congress government in that state is now so broke that it failed to pay one of its bills and Himachal Bhawan in Delhi was ordered to be forfeited by the Himachal Pradesh High Court.
The Congress Party’s ‘socialist’ economic ideology has nearly always been founded on unwieldy welfare schemes that seek to put money into the hands of the poor, only because real ways to lift them out of poverty have not been found. When Narendra Modi became prime minister, he sneered at these schemes and, at one point, it seemed that he would put an end to them altogether. It took a single taunt from Rahul Gandhi about him running a ‘suit-boot ki sarkar’ for Modi to go into reverse gear and start travelling down the same economic road that has kept India poor for decades.
Today, there is not a BJP government that is not dependent on winning votes by throwing money at the poor. So, in Maharashtra, as elections drew near, the government suddenly discovered that the state’s ‘beloved sisters’ needed to be given monthly pocket money. The scheme was devised for women earning less than Rs 20,000 a month or nothing at all but already there are stories of women who earn much more benefiting as well.
The truth is that these schemes have never done anything to end the scourge of poverty. All that they do is provide some relief to those who continue to live below the poverty line or just above it. They can do no more than this. The only way to really lift people out of poverty is to give them the tools to do this through their own efforts. These tools are high quality schools in which children acquire an education instead of just literacy. Hospitals in which people can have access to halfway decent health services. And real jobs instead of dole.
The problem is that these things require investment and that cannot happen if nearly all our (taxpayers’) money is squandered on freebies. Modi deserves credit for at least having made these welfare schemes less leaky by directly transferring money into the accounts of beneficiaries. But the result is the same as the result Congress achieved after decades of ruling India. No significant reduction in poverty and no significant improvement in public services because after salaries of government employees have been paid and after the welfare schemes have been paid for, there is not much left to spend on building roads, drinking water facilities, or on improving the filthy conditions in which most Indians live.
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A recent scary example comes instantly to mind. Delhi was recently found to have the most poisonous air of any city in the world, but instead of taking this seriously, our political leaders and their spokesmen immediately started blaming each other. It was farmers burning stubble in Punjab that was the problem, screeched BJP spokespersons, and the Chief Minister of Delhi, Atishi, responded by pointing out that stubble was also burned in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh, so it was wrong to put all the blame on the Aam Aadmi Party government in Punjab.
There are alternatives to burning stubble. And they must be found at a national level so that ordinary people in northern India can be given that most basic human right. Clean air to breathe. Solutions for efficient urban waste management in cities and small towns are also urgently needed. These cost money and where is that going to come from if we keep throwing it at the poor on the condition that they agree to continue living half-lives in degraded, dismal conditions and in desperate destitution.
There was a time when we accepted that India would always be a poor country but not only do we refuse to accept this now, our Prime Minister boasts about how we will soon become the third largest economy in the world. What difference will that make if the citizens of Delhi are forced to breathe poisonous air. If our sacred rivers continue to resemble drains. And if huge mountains of garbage continue being built on the borders of cities simply because we cannot afford modern methods of waste management. The Beloved Sisters monthly pocket money scheme was designed to defeat anti-incumbency in Maharashtra. But is it truly going to help India?
