The Delhi Model: Freebies, empty coffers, and a heavy price to pay

In the Mahabharata, when the five Pandava brothers were banished from Hastinapur, they cleared a patch of forest west of the Yamuna to build their first capital city—Khandavprastha. The city was later rechristened Indraprastha after Indra, the god of rain, consented to become its protecting deity.

Over the millennia, since Veda Vyasa penned the great epic, Pandava’s Indraprastha has been invaded, destroyed, and rebuilt many times. The last major expansion came in 1911, when King George V moved the imperialist capital from Calcutta to Delhi. The city expanded to the south and southwest of Shahjahanabad (Old Delhi) to accommodate offices and dwellings for the secretariat. Soon, a New Delhi emerged, with boulevards lined with Jamun and Neem trees, rising from the rocky Aravali stubs. After 1947, new colonies sprang from the ruins of Partition, including settlements on the floodplains across the Yamuna. Delhi eventually became NCR—the National Capital Region.

Humans, by nature, yearn for novelty. Leaders of the past and politicians of today understand this better than anyone. In the age of reels and online marketing, dreams travel faster than supersonics. Like Tony Blair’s call for a New Labour, Imran Khan’s Naya Pakistan, and Donald Trump’s Make America Great Again. Or Arvind Kejriwal’s promise to turn Delhi into Paris.

This spring, when Delhi queued up to elect a new government, voters evinced an unmistakable longing for an evening in Paris. Despite its efforts and achievements in health and education, ennui had set in. The incumbent looked jaded. The Yamuna smelled acrid. Real estate had turned into speculation rather than housing.

The Bharatiya Janata Party, out of power for 27 years in Delhi, convinced voters that the city was suffering because the state was being run by twin engines pulling in opposite directions. During the campaign, Prime Minister Narendra Modi promised to make Delhi the world’s best capital city. The electorate couldn’t resist the temptation of moving to Washington DC overnight. The BJP won by a landslide.

Just before the oath-taking, a stampede at New Delhi railway station served as a reality check for the new rulers of a city bursting at the seams. Home to nearly 33 million people—more than the entire populations of countries like New Zealand, Greece, or Sweden—Delhi is a metropolis where millions jostle for space in buses, the metro, the streets, and the job market. 

The new government has its task cut out. Given the paucity of resources, it will have to pick its battles. Among the many promises made in the competitive cacophony of the election campaign, cleaning the Yamuna appears to be the priority. A facelift has a certain face value—it can be showcased. So, unsurprisingly, the first thing new
Chief Minister Rekha Gupta did after taking oath and assuming office was visit a Yamuna ghat.

Delhi’s pollution problems, however, are not limited to the toxic foam floating about the Yamuna during the chatt puja. From November to January every year, toxicity hangs in the air like a giant marquee. Severe pollution conditions prevail for days on end. The Supreme Court has repeatedly had to intervene to kick in emergency measures. Politicians, meanwhile, reduce the issue to a Kisan vs Insaan debate whenever farmers in neighbouring Punjab and Haryana start burning stubble. In the ensuing din, it often becomes unclear who is backing whom.

A study by the University of Chicago estimates that Delhi residents lose nearly eight years of their life expectancy due to air pollution. Industry bodies estimate that air pollution and graded restrictions alone inflicted a loss of Rs 2,500 crore in November 2024. Those who can afford it flee to cleaner environs for the winter—but they are a minuscule minority.

If the Aam Aadmi Party promised free electricity and water to script a comeback in 2020, the BJP outdid the competition in 2025 by offering Rs 2,500 per month to the women of Delhi. The former CM and the new leader of the opposition, Aatishi, has wasted no time in demanding that her successor fulfil the pledge made to approximately 38 lakh beneficiaries. The cost? An estimated Rs 950 crore per month or Rs 11,500 crore per year. A back-of-the-envelope calculation shows that the cost of implementing the scheme would consume almost 15% of Delhi’s current budget pegged at Rs 77,000 crore.

It shall be done, says the CM. But the government will have to forage for resources. Because 15 years of Congress followed by another decade of AAP at Dilli Durbar have rendered coffers empty, Gupta is said to have told her party legislators.

Additional funds must be mopped up. With both engines now pulling in the same direction, the train should pick up some pace, or so goes the belief. Post GST, the scope of generating extra revenues is limited to VAT, stamp duty, and motor vehicle tax.

Meanwhile, the Municipal Corporation of Delhi remains under AAP control, albeit by a slender margin. Elections are due in 2027, and competitive freebie politics is likely to spill over into the civic polls. AAP has already announced a house tax waiver for city residents.

Delhi, the capital of India, is now the new beacon of freedom in contemporary politics. Where the State is willing to offer civic amenities for free or at a discount.

It’s a governance model for which the residents, in the longer run, may have to pay a heavy price.