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 | Lose-lose situation: Populism hits taxpayer; netas don't gain Our Correspondent The farm loan waiver, touted as the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) Government's masterstroke in the election year, has failed to deliver at the polling booths. The ruling coalition thought that it was being very clever—adroitly using taxpayers' money to buy votes for itself. Karnataka has shown that cleverness does not pay every time; a commonsense approach can help us see why. But Congress president Sonia Gandhi has surrounded herself with two sets of people—cynical politicians who have little to do with principles, and fossilized intellectuals who refuse to come out of their ivory towers. Yet, there is a common trait between so disparate groups of people: both of them have bidden adieu to commonsense, and both have supreme disdain for empirical evidence. Therefore, they cannot realize that distributing freebies does not make the people thankful; it only increases the demands for more freebies. And since there is a limit to disbursements, people start feeling cheated when that limit is reached; those who are left out for some reason feel cheated, in any case. For instance, when Finance Minister P. Chidambaram announced the Rs 60,000-crore loan waiver for farmers in his Budget speech, the ones who were left out—that is, the farmers with higher acreage—became sullen and demanded to be made eligible for the largesse. They received support from various quarters, including Congress general secretary Rahul Gandhi. The package bloated by about 20 per cent, reaching Rs 71,680 crore. But has it made everybody happy? Far from it. The Vidharbha Jan Andolan Samiti responded, saying that the augmented package would not help the three million suicide-prone cotton growers of Vidharbha. The new demand? Complete loan waiver is needed. And since that is not possible—after all, the taxpayer is not kaamdhenu who can be milked infinitely—more goodies will not make the beneficiaries feel thankful to the powers that be. At the same time, the Government ends up turning its back on its other commitments. According to a news report, "Urban renewal of over-populated mega cities has become the first casualty of the generous loan waiver scheme of the UPA Government. Projects dealing with water supply in Uttar Pradesh's towns and cities (worth Rs 4,000 crore), sewage disposal in Mumbai, the Yamuna action plan in New Delhi—apart from those involving the upgrading of urban infrastructure and its administration in 63 cities across the country—will now only be taken up by the new government at the Centre." The moral of the story is that populism is a lose-lose situation. The taxpayer loses; and the politician does not gain. Are our political masters listening? Posted on : 6/2/2008 Mail this article to your friend |