Ensuring basic rights to citizens is not freebie culture

India has been managing the world’s largest and longest-running free food programme since April 2020. This is called the Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Anna Yojana (PMGKAY). It ensures that more than 80 crore Indians get a ration of five kilos of either rice or wheat per person per month, completely free. This is a transformed version of the National Food Security Act (NFSA) passed in 2013, which guaranteed to three-fourths of rural India and half of urban India, rice, wheat or coarse cereal at Rs 3, 2 or Re 1 a kilo, respectively. PMGKAY has now made it free of cost. It was launched during the pandemic and ensured that the economic and livelihood predicament did not become a food crisis. It has been extended beyond two years. The government also claims, validly, that the in-kind transfer of food (instead of giving a fixed amount of cash) has protected households from food inflation.

The critics of the NFSA back then (and there were many) had mainly focused on its huge fiscal burden. But NFSA was passed in Parliament after more than a decade-long movement called the ‘right to food’ campaign. In the early days of the campaign, there was a public interest litigation in the apex court asking for its intervention to reduce hunger and malnutrition. It was especially shocking because hunger coexisted along with mountains of food grain stocks in government granaries. There was no question of not being able to afford a programme to ensure nearly universal ration of subsidised food grain.

The other objection to NFSA came from a cabinet minister himself, who famously quipped that since it cost Rs 18 to produce a kilo of rice and only Rs 3 to buy it at ration shops, what incentive would any farmer have to produce rice? It was a clever quip and pointed out the incentive effect of freebies.

But this lack-of-incentive argument fails since the government has a large procurement programme which provides supply-side incentives, and the food subsidy is the difference between the cost of procurement and the revenue from selling at low prices.

The ‘right to food’, along with the ‘right to employment’ (MNREGA) and the ‘right to education’ of the Congress-led UPA regime was a new paradigm of rights-based development that the government initiated in the first decade of this century. This new rights-based approach, of course, does have a fiscal cost, but that cost is inevitable if we as a society believe that these are basic rights and must be enforced, whatever the cost.

During the pandemic, not only PMGKAY but also MNREGS, which acts as a proxy for unemployment insurance, proved invaluable. The government has in the last decade extended such rights to affordable housing (Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana), health insurance (Ayushman Bharat), and toilets (Swachh Bharat). All of these programmes have elements of subsidies, and nobody can accuse these programmes of inducing a freebie culture.

Indeed, in developed countries, even access to electricity and the internet have been raised to the level of basic rights. In Scandinavia, even convicts in prisons have the right to internet access. But in India, the debate over subsidies, incentives, much-needed support, welfare spending, basic rights and election campaign promises often gets mixed up in the criticism over “freebies”.

The Supreme Court last week suggested setting up a specialised body to debate the issue of doing away with “irrational freebies” offered to voters during elections. The suggestion by the apex court follows a PIL that has been supported by the government. The PIL wants political parties to be stopped from offering “irrational freebies” and making populist promises that sway voters from making informed decisions.

It is not the first time that the courts have been approached to do something about the “freebie” culture. In 2006, the Madras High Court admitted a petition against the practice of offering free mixers, grinders and what-not during election campaigns. The case was eventually resolved by the apex court, asking the Election Commission to include some provision for this in the model code of conduct. Then came the Amma Canteens (highly subsidised cooked food) of Tamil Nadu. Such subsidised canteens for the working urban poor have been emulated by other states as well.

The most discussed issue has been that of free power to farmers. This is a practice which has spread far beyond Punjab, where it originated many years ago. It has led to many ill-effects such as reckless proliferation of irrigation pumps, tube-wells, and an alarming lowering of the water table.

Similarly, massive subsidies on urea lead to overuse, and increased salinity of the soil, making the land fallow. High usage of chemical fertilisers has also been linked to the increased incidence of cancer. But how many of these ill-effects can be linked to the so-called freebie culture?

And is this connection not for elected politicians to explain to their electorate? If the electorate expects parties to deliver on these promises, how can courts intervene? And why should they intervene?

The case of free electricity is worth examining. Technology like metering and remote measurement make it possible to assure a limited quantity of free power, beyond which commercial rates can apply, or the user faces a termination of the connection. Most poor households will not cross the minimum threshold, since they don’t own devices that consume massive amounts of electricity.

Besides, more than half the losses of all electricity distribution companies are on account of unpaid subsidies from state governments. The total cumulative losses of all discoms amount to only 10% of the bad loans written off by public sector banks in the past five years. Surely those losses of banks are an egregious waste of taxpayer and voters’ money. Hence, the fiscal argument against so-called freebies does not stand, since much bigger fiscal giveaways exist as loan write-offs or in non-merit subsidies.

The Union budget itself discloses revenues foregone in terms of tax exemptions, which used to be bigger than even the biggest item, i.e., the annual interest burden of the government.

As India’s development path is more along the welfarist model of a mixed economy (i.e., balanced between State and market economy), the expenditure on various modes of welfare, many of which are simply ensuring basic rights to things like food, school lunches, healthcare, primary education, piped drinking water, etc., is fully justified. It is for lawmakers to find the appropriate source of untapped funds, the right mix of direct and indirect taxes to address the needs of welfare spending and to reduce inequality. Promises of welfare spending should not be equated to a reckless freebie culture or a race to the bottom. This is really an issue between lawmakers, the political executive and the people, and not a matter of concern for the judiciary. It must be understood that welfare spending is essential to partly redress the widening inequality in Indian society.

(The writer is a noted economist)
(Syndicate: The Billion Press)