The biggest current truth that has emerged about India’s electoral democracy is to throw the freebies and win the election. If we look at the results of the assembly elections of Maharashtra and Jharkhand and before that, the election results of Haryana, then it becomes clear that in all three states the voters worked to make the ruling party victorious. In all three states of Jharkhand, Maharashtra and Haryana, the ruling party took advantage of being in power, used the treasury liberally and ultimately succeeded in winning over its estranged voters. These things are proving appropriate because six months ago the political scenario in these three states was that of anti-incumbency, which changed to pro-incumbency by the time of voting.
As it has been evident from the past that the biggest feature of independent India’s electoral democracy was visible in the form of identity politics i.e. the blatant use of caste, religion, language and region, in which the power of money and muscle power was added. Now the politics of populism and treasury opening have started gaining a strong foothold in it. However, in the past too, there were many instances of populist politics in India, such as in Tamil Nadu, there were talks of distributing cows, sometimes jewellery, sometimes radio, sometimes mobile phones.Earlier, loan waiver of farmers was also used by many state governments to win elections. But in Delhi, the populism that AAP party provided by providing free electricity, water and later free bus travel to women became a permanent part of their politics.
The Congress party, which earlier believed more in loan waiver kind of thing under populist politics, also won the 2009 Lok Sabha elections on the basis of loan waiver of farmers. During the time of Indira Gandhi, food grains at subsidized rates through PDS had become a big fodder for the politics of that time. But the cult of free bus, electricity and water started by AAP party in Delhi was adopted exactly by the Congress party in the last assembly elections in Karnataka and it also won there. At the same time, Narendra Modi government adopted the free ration of Indira’s era as the politics of Rewadi. Under this, the free ration scheme of the Government of India, which was started during the Covid disaster, was extended for the next five years by the Modi government keeping the Loksabha and other states’ elections in mind.
If seen, in this electoral democracy of India, this new prevalent politics of rewadi has both a good side and a bad side. As far as benefiting women in financial terms through several schemes like ladli behana or grih laxmi scheme during the election times, it has some valid reasons also. The positive side appears to be that women, who constitute half of the country’s population, have now become a very important political class for all parties. Earlier political parties were doing politics of social justice i.e; Dalit, tribal and backward as a social class which already vehemently established in our political cult. However in general term, the three professional categories i.e;- farmers, laborers and youth – were always the prominent political voter class for the political parties, in which women have now emerged as the fourth most important political voter class as a gender category. If seen, schemes like Ladli Behan and Griha Laxmi Yojana, which were first started keeping women in mind in the state of Madhya Pradesh, have now been adopted by almost all the states in these three election states i.e. Haryana, Maharashtra and Jharkhand, so the pre-election governments had made a huge increase in the monthly stipend amount given to women. The result was that the voting percentage of women voters in these three states increased much more than the previous elections. Ultimately these factors created preferable in favor of the ruling party by the voters.
It must be said that this new revadi culture has started a new chapter in Indian politics in terms of economic empowerment as well as political empowerment of the women class who were considered neglected in India . Now, the political parties of India have deeply assimilated the importance of the votes of half of the population, which can be termed as a good development. But on the other hand, the sad side of this revadi politics is that it is discouraging the process of better and productive use of resources in the economy. Second the politics of charity and revadi is reducing the real productivity of the people. It is true that in the modern polity, taxation on the rich and its transfer to the poor is considered a progressive and prevalent mode of governance. But what would be an ideal standard of economic administration of governments under which the detailed guidelines for the allocation and transfer of economic resources and tax revenue can be made. Thereafter it must be made a constitutional part of the statecraft, then that situation would be much better. Fact of the matter is that, any welfare government must first give priority to internal and external security for its citizens, second human development i.e. education, health and sanitation and third to provide comprehensive social security ecosystem to all deserving citizenry.
In order to this, all political parties must set their promises and manifestos within its scope and radius. The second parameter is that providing all the infrastructure needs and facilities for the economy with an appropriate usage fee should also be a part of this guideline. If we talk about the broad spectrum of socio-economic welfare of the people, then employment to the able, pension to the disabled, education, medical treatment and scholarship stipend to all the dependent population. This should be the prime motto. In all the above cases, if private sector is also working along with the government, then formation of a regulatory authority must be done. But in a democracy, pressure groups and various lobbies, through their own pressure, pressurize democratic governments to take both appropriate and inappropriate decisions in their favor.
In any competitive democracy including India, there must be a level playing field regarding elections. .For example, on the politics of revadi , the party in opposition will not be able to attract voters because it does not have the treasury whereas the ruling party gets the advantage of being in power. Secondly, it also puts a heavy burden on the royal treasury.The third thing that is worth noting is that in order to ensure that no player gets a monopoly position in the business environment, we have an anti-monopoly law is made and an anti-monopoly commission is also constituted to oversee all their business activities.Now the question is whether on the same lines, along with the politics of identity-money-muscle-hate speeches, populism politics should also be stopped in the Indian electoral democracy, for that our political regulator i.e. Election Commission must be given a comprehensive guideline as per the instructions of the Supreme Court. If this happens, it will not only make our democracy competitive on a better scale, but will also make India’s democracy run on the latest standards of good governance. However, the recent results of the state assembly elections, it has been well established that anti-incumbency can be blunted through revadi culture. In this sequence, now the eyes of the political pundits of the country have moved towards the upcoming assembly elections of Delhi in February. The chief of AAP party Arving Kejriwal has already started decorating his pandal for election discussion on revadi
