Letters: The cost of welfare

The issues raised in Ajay Chhibber's article "How to improve the welfare state"(September 28) are relevant, especially when government policy is going through a churn, with proposals such as re-inventing the whole planning process and fuelling hope at the ground level with promises such as providing toilets and bank accounts for all.

Every elite economist and most of those who express their views in the mainstream media have an aversion to subsidies. As I am not a student of economics, I can easily define subsidy as a product of bad employment, income, price and wage policies. If the state is able to manage these policies with the overall welfare of the people in view, subsidy bills will come down. Policy changes should factor in, among other things, the assured opportunity for education up to 18 years of age, a minimum wage policy that ensures "living wages" for all workers, a realistic and reasonable insurance scheme, post-retirement and health care. If welfare is built into governance, the cost of welfare will not be seen in isolation and criticised like this. Corruption, inefficiency and "leakages" are separate issues, which should be handled mercilessly.

M G Warrier Mumbai

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