Freebies: trickle-down effect

Freebies announced by political parties for the Tamil Nadu Assembly Polls yield better results than the government’s development programmes, a top Election Commission official contends. Talking off the record about election goodies he pointed out that Rajiv Gandhi had said of every rupee spent on developmental programmes only 15 paisa reached the people. But the result was much better in the case of election goodies, the official said. If a TV set is promised to the voter, he explained, the party promising it will not give only the box — the TV set will be delivered in full.

Poetic licence

If there are many takers for the public private partnership (PPP) model in infrastructure financing in government it is because it offers an opportunity to reduce public expenditure on these projects. R P Singh, secretary, department of industrial policy and promotion, explained this by reciting a couplet. Kiya khazana desh ka kha kha ke khatm; Tab hamne izaad ki PPP ki rasm (when we exhausted the exchequer, we discovered the PPP ritual). Finance Secretary Sushama Nath, who was also present on the dais, responded to Singh by saying that PPP model was quite useful in certain cases and gave the example of it working in modernising a jail.