Indian politics today is plagued by an uncomfortable arithmetic. On one side is the expanding culture of pre-election freebies: expensive, recurring, and funded by the taxpayer. On the other is the far less discussed but persistent practice of post-election political engineering: one-time, opaque, and targeted. Questions emerge: which of these two costs the public exchequer more? What puts a greater burden on the taxpayer? Can Indian polity do away with either of these nefarious tactics?
Let’s take up freebies, usually framed as welfare measures or guarantees. In Maharashtra, the Ladki Bahin Yojana promises monthly cash transfers to eligible women, conservative estimates placing its annual outlay in thousands of crores of rupees. In Karnataka, the current government’s five flagship guarantees, the free bus travel for women (Shakti scheme), 200 units of free electricity (Gruha Jyothi), monthly cash support to women heads of households (Gruha Lakshmi), unemployment assistance (Yuva Nidhi), and subsidised foodgrains (Anna Bhagya), these together cost upwards of Rs 50,000–60,000 crore annually.
These are not one-off expenditures, but recur year after year, expand with political competition, and are rarely rolled back once introduced. Tamil Nadu’s long-running model of subsidised or free consumer goods, ranging from mixers and grinders to laptops, set an early template. Andhra Pradesh’s direct benefit schemes under successive governments have pushed welfare spending, tightening the fiscal space. Punjab’s free power commitments singularly strain the state’s finances.
Politicians who have rolled out these schemes, argue that these are legitimate welfare measures. Free transport improves mobility for women; subsidised electricity eases household budgets; cash transfers support consumption in weaker sections. But the fiscal reality is harder to ignore. Many states are already operating with high debt to GDP ratios, limited revenue buoyancy, and growing committed expenditures. When a large share of the budget is locked into politically irreversible guarantees, something has to give way making capital expenditure on infrastructure, health systems, or education pain areas.
Even though arithmetic favours post-election consolidation, politicians lean on freebies. Firstly it gives them moral and electoral legitimacy, assembling numbers later often attracts public and judicial scrutiny. Secondly it offers a visible proof of “success” unlike post-poll deals which are invisible and don’t build a voter base. Third is repeatability, elections recur and a party can’t rely on post-poll arithmetic forever without building ground support through freebies.
Re-alignments through post-election consolidation of power through defections is now become a bankable, frequently occurring phenomenon. Karnataka (2019), Madhya Pradesh (2020) or Maharashtra (multiple phases) in earlier cycles, are examples of relatively small number of elected representatives being persuaded to switch sides or abstain, altering the balance of power without returning to the electorate.
The costs are opaque, but the scale is limited, requiring the support of a few dozen legislators at most. Assuming substantial inducements like hosting elected representatives in star resorts, assuring them political positions, future electoral assurances, or alleged financial incentives, the total outlay, spread over a one-time political event, is a fraction of a mass welfare freebie scheme.
Post-poll manoeuvring is neither clean, legal, nor desirable, lacking in integrity, transparency, and institutional credibility. Yet considering the narrow economic costs it is preferable to the freebie culture. Take Karnataka. If the guarantees cost around Rs 60,000 crore annually, the sustained fiscal commitment over the government’s tenure, potentially crosses Rs 3 lakh crore over five years. By contrast, the political upheaval of 2019 cost a fraction of this fiscal burden. Similarly Madhya Pradesh during the collapse of its government in 2020.
Consider the opportunity cost. Every rupee committed to a subsidy is a rupee unavailable for investment. Roads, irrigation, public health infrastructure, and school systems suffer when budgets are subsumed by guarantees. Even with freebie eligibility, despite direct benefit transfer (DBT), leakages and inclusion errors are common. Post-election political transactions, by contrast, are highly targeted and focused on individuals, not populations. From a purely fiscal efficiency standpoint, the difference is significant.
Given a fait accompli in as much as politicians will continue with both these obnoxious tactics, should taxpayer money dispense freebies to secure electoral goodwill at scale, or be disbursed long after the ballots are counted? A shift has to come, especially when fiscal stress will soon stop becoming manageable, when eventually states face persistently high deficits, credit downgrades, delayed payments, cuts to infrastructure, tighter borrowing limits, rising debt service burdens and shrinking room for capital expenditure. When welfare bills start crowding out growth spending and governments struggle to sustain commitments without new taxes, political strategy will have to recalibrate. Freebies will never be abandoned, but expect narrower, targeted schemes instead of universal freebies, combined with post-poll tactics of questionable legality to secure numbers. The political landscape cynically will be forced by arithmetic.
(Priyan R Naik is a columnist and independent journalist living in
Bengaluru.)
