Indian elections: Democracy dancing to the tune of populism since 1982

From NTR's promise of rice at Rs 2 a kg to PM-KISAN and the Congress' NYAY scheme, Business Standard traces the history of populist announcements before elections in India

Call it the failure of the trickle-down process or the populist pressure at the hustings, one of the highlights of elections in India, both parliamentary and Assembly, are big promises — from foodgrain at as little at Rs 1 a kg to laptops, low-cost canteens, and farm debt waivers.

In the coming Lok Sabha elections, minimum income support seems to be the most dazzling of promises — both the Congress, with its Nyuntam Aay Yojana (NYAY), and the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), with its Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi (PM-KISAN) have latched on to it, and there also are several variants from regional parties. When did the trend of populist announcements take off and how has it changed over the years?

While both the India Gandhi-led Congress (I) and the Janata Party had previously promised to end poverty, populist promises took a new turn when the then newly formed Telugu Desam Party, under the leadership of Andhra movie star N T Rama Rao, in 1982 promised rice at Rs 2 a kg. From there on, there has been no looking back; election after election has seen new populist promises, extending from economical food to and cheap consumer durables.

Let us take a look at various major promises made by parties in these years:

NTR's promise, embraced later by YSR:

NTR, who gained popularity after playing in Telugu movies the characters of Hindu deities, especially Krishna and Rama, drove his nine-month-old party to power in Andhra Pradesh in 1983 with the promise of providing rice to the poor at the rate of Rs 2 a kg. His was the first non-Congress government in the state. This promise, however, was not the only factor that brought the regional party to power. Rao had also made ‘Andhra pride’ a huge election issue following an alleged ill-treatment of chief minister T Anjaiah by Rajiv Gandhi, the son of the then PM, Indira Gandhi. But the promise of cheap rice certainly played an important part in bringing about a change of regime in the state. The scheme was junked in the year 2000 after rice prices rose to about Rs 5.50 a kg, pushing the government’s subsidy burden to Rs 2,150 crore.

The Congress party’s Y S Rajsekhara Reddy later resurrected the promise in the 2004 polls and swept the elections for his party. He also kept the price at Rs 2 a kg for the below-poverty-line (BPL) families when he implemented the scheme in 2008. Ironically, when NTR had made the promise years earlier, it was the Congress that had derided the scheme.

Free colour TV sets

In the 2006 Tamil Nadu Assembly elections, the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) promised to provide free colour TV sets to economically weaker people. The party came to power despite experts having written its political obituary after a defeat in the previous Assembly polls. Later, in 2008, the then DMK chief, M Karunanidhi, elaborated why he promised such a thing. The 'growing demand' for television news prompted DMK to promise free colour television for people, he said. “From the days of the print media and radio, the dissemination of news had reached the realm of television. By switching on their television sets the moment they woke up, people could know what was happening in the world. Realising the importance of news, especially of TV news, the DMK decided to provide free colour TVs to the economically poor."

Laptops

Another instance of electoral promises capturing the imagination of the new generation was Samajwadi Party's (SP’s) promise in 2012 of providing free laptops to those students who passed class 12 and tablet computers to those who passed class 10. Ironically, the same party had previously opposed the use of computers blaming them for causing unemployment. With the promise of providing computers, the party’s new chief ministerial candidate Akhilesh Yadav perhaps heralded a generational shift in the SP.

“We are touted by the media as being against English and computers. We will provide laptops to intermediate and tablets to high school passouts," senior SP leader Ramgopal Yadav had said while reading out the party's manifesto in Lucknow.

In fact, the party went on to distribute about 1.8 million laptops to class 12 passouts in five years between 2012 and 2017.

Later, the Bharatiya Janata Party also echoed the promise in the 2017 UP assembly election by promising of free laptops to all college students with 1 GB of free internet per month. However, Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath recently said his government would like to provide quality education rather than laptops.

The 2017 UP Assembly polls, in fact, saw a raft of promises being made by political parties. The ruling SP promised pressure cookers and food grains for the poor, besides ghee and milk for students, and expanding pension benefits under different schemes to 10 m‎illion people. This time, SP promised laptops for meritorious students and smartphones for all.

The Congress, meanwhile, promised free school education for every girl child and give free bicycles to girl students from Class 9 to 12.

Cheap electricity, free water supply

At the time of the 2013 Delhi Assembly polls, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), then a political outfit newly minted from activist Anna Hazare’s agitation against corruption, promised to halve the electricity bills for the city’s people. When the party came to power under the leadership of Arvind Kejriwal, it did deliver on the electricity bill promise, but only for those consuming up to 400 units a month. It was done though a subsidy from the state exchequer, not power supply companies.

Similarly, the AAP manifesto had promised to provide free water supply to families using up to 700 litres a day, even as those using more than this limit would have to pay the full amount. This promise was also met. But the government did not last its full term.

After nearly two years, in its manifesto for the 2015 polls, the party again promised that the power rates would be halved but clarified this time that it would be for people consuming up to 400 units; those consuming more would have to pay the full amount. On the water front also, it made promises similar to those in 2013. The swept the elections, bagging 67 of the 70 Assembly seats and implemented the schemes after coming to power.

Free WiFi, CCTV cameras

The AAP also promised in its 2015 manifesto that it would provide free WiFi access across Delhi and install at least one million CCTV cameras to make the city safer for women. In its last budget (2019-20) of the present term, the AAP government has allocated for these two projects. While Rs 150 has been set aside for WiFi, Rs 500 crore has been allocated for CCTV cameras. Delhi Finance Minister Manish Sisodia said: “We promised (free) WiFi facilities in our manifesto. That will be completed this year." He said that his government had decided to go for the hotspot mode after exploring several options. Approximately 140,000 CCTVs, or 2,000 cameras per Assembly constituency, would be installed, he said.

Late Amma's grand offer

J Jayalalithaa, then the chief of the All India Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) made some grand promises for the 2016 Tamil Nadu Assembly polls, the last before her demise — from free cell phones to all ration card holders to free laptops with free internet to class 10th and 12th students, free gold to women ahead of marriages (without mentioning the amount), 50 per cent subsidy to women buying scooties, one million free houses under various schemes, milk at Rs 25 a litre, a new banking card for availing of government services, 100 units of free electricity every two months, and Rs 18,000 as maternity assistance to expecting women. She also promised free WiFi at public places, and Rs 1 lakh for local deities. She won the Assembly elections for a second straight term in the state that is known to alternate between the AIADMK and DMK. On the first day after taking over in 2016, she cleared five files, implementing promises like limited free electricity to domestic users and free gold for marriages.

In her earlier regime, Jayalalithaa had in 2013 started Amma Unavagam (Mother’s canteen) with much fanfare. Meals were priced at Re 1, Rs 3 and Rs 5 and the menu included idli, pongal, pre-mixed rice and chapatis. It was replicated by the states of Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Odisha, Andhra Pradesh and Delhi, among others, under different names.

Farm debt waiver

Similar promises had been made earlier as well, but those made by earlier as well, but the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government’s announcement in the last Union Budget of its first term set a new paradigm. Since then, promises of waiving off farm loans have figured in many elections, mostly state ones. The UPA government announced, and later delivered, waiver of Rs 50,000 crore worth of farm debt for small farmers, and a Rs 10,000-crore one-time settlement for medium and large farmers. The very fact that UPA did return to power after Lok Sabha polls in 2009 made the scheme a lucrative one for successive governments.

The scheme was not announced by UPA in its second term in office or by the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government that later succeeded it. But, towards the fag end of its tenure, NDA did announce PM-KISAN, which is not exactly a debt waiver scheme but transfers Rs 6,000 a year directly to the bank account of each small farmer in three instalments. The scheme is limited to farmers with cultivable land of up to two hectares each. The programme will entail an annual expenditure of Rs 72,000 crore. However, additional beneficiaries to the scheme have not been added since March 10 this year as the model code of conduct is in force; the scheme remains truncated until the end of the Lok Sabha elections, which start from April 11.

The UPA's farm debt waiver scheme had found reverberations in Punjab, Karnataka, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra, albeit in varying forms. Odisha and Telangana also started their own schemes for transferring money to farmers. While the former announced the Krushak Assistance for Livelihood and Income Augmentation (KALIA), the latter came out with Raythu Bandhu.

Under KALIA, farmers are being provided Rs 10,000 per family as assistance for cultivation. Each family gets Rs 5,000 separately in the kharif and rabi seasons for five cropping seasons between 2018-19 and 2021-22. The scheme is not linked to the amount of land owned. Under Rythu Bandhu, the Telangana government provides 5.83 million farmers with Rs 4,000 per acre per season to support farm investment twice a year — once each for rabi and kharif seasons. There is no cap on the area of land owned by farmers.

Rahul Gandhi’s NYAY scheme

The idea of universal basic income (UBI) was first mooted in India by former chief economic advisor Arvind Subrmanian. Ahead of elections, Congress President Rahul Gandhi recently promised a kind of UBI. Though a truncated UBI, the scheme would still cost the exchequer Rs 3.5 trillion. The NYAY scheme — the acronym literally translates to ‘justice’ in English — would offer Rs 6,000 per month per family to an estimated 50 million poor families. A family is considered poor under this scheme if its income is less than Rs 12,000 a month. While critics call the scheme a mere promise, the Congress said it is very much implementable. Should the Congress come power, it would be run on a pilot basis for the first two years and implemented in full only from the third year. "Our calculation shows that the funds required for NYAY will not cross 2 per cent of the country’s GDP,” former finance minister and veteran Congress leader P Chidambaram said. “An expert committee will be set up for its implementation and it will design the scheme at every stage and we will consult the experts’ committee before we move to the next stage,” he added.

All eyes are now on whether the BJP would come out with a counter to NYAY. Finance Minister Arun Jaitley recently said a growing market-based economy with larger resources is the only answer to reducing poverty.