Electoral welfarism, but necessary, too

The Union cabinet has taken two significant decisions that will help large sections of the population, though they have a political dimension to them. It has decided to provide free food grains to more than 800 million beneficiaries covered under the National Food Security Act (NFSA) for one year and approved a pension revision for retirees from the armed forces under the One Rank One Pension (OROP) scheme. Typically, the government and the ruling party have presented the two decisions as a ‘New Year’ gift to the people and as proof of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s pro-poor policies. The Opposition has also been demanding that the government should provide food grains for needy people because of the difficult economic situation in the country. Large numbers of people are affected by the elevated levels of inflation in the last many months. Unemployment has been high, and it has especially hit daily wage-earners and people from the weaker sections. The pincer-hold of lack of income and high prices has made life extremely difficult.

Beneficiaries of the Public Distribution System (PDS) who used to get rice, wheat and coarse grains at cheap rates will now get 35 kg food grains free of cost for the next one year. Others will get 5 kg of food grains free each month till December 2023. The various welfare programmes directed at poor people, including the Antyodaya Anna Yojana, and a specific programme which was launched during the lockdown period in April 2020, have been merged now. One of them was to end this month. The government will incur a cost of Rs 2 lakh crore for the programme. The pension revision for retired armed services personnel is aimed at meeting a long-standing demand of the veterans. The implementation of the revised plan, which will benefit over 2.5 million personnel, will cost about Rs 24,000 crore.

While the State has the obligation to go to the aid of the poor and needy sections of people, especially in times of distress, the obvious political underpinning of these decisions will not go unnoticed. The free food grain scheme will run for one year and by then the country will be close to the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. Some important state Assembly elections will also be held next year. The government will certainly try to take electoral advantage of these schemes as it did from the free food grain scheme and other plans during the last elections. Ironically, the Prime Minister has been criticising the “freebie culture” in some of his recent speeches. His own government’s decision is electoral welfarism in action, but the positive point is that it is needed in these fraught times.