FISCAL FRAGILITY & FAUSTIAN FRACAS ON FREEBIES

THE quintessential indian adage ‘Jab jago tab savera’, it is dawn whenever you wake up, eloquently describes the whimsical wobble of piety which surfaces and echoes periodically in india’s political arena.

- SHANKKAR AIYAR

The freebie debate is back.

On Thursday, Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge sermonised the party on being fiscally responsible. speaking in Bengaluru, amid a controversy over the withdrawal of one of the five guarantees, Kharge said, ”Don’t go for saying five, six or 10 guarantees. Give guarantees according to your state budget. if you give guarantees beyond your budget, you will become bankrupt.”

The Kharge cautionary note arrives in the run-up to the polls in Maharashtra—where the Maha Vikas Aghadi alliance of the Congress, NCP sharad Pawar and Uddhav Bal Thackeray shiv sena is set to unroll its promises. The Congress is pitching the Maha version of five guarantees—cash transfers to women heads of households, free bus travel, 10 kg of foodgrains for families, 200 units of free power and unemployment allowance.

Predictably, the BJP latched on to the Kharge advisory and targeted the Congress. Prime Minister Narendra Modi led the blitzkrieg, stating that the Congress is realising “that making unreal promises is easy but implementing them properly is tough or impossible”. The PM added that the Congress stands “badly exposed in front of the people” and went on to hash-tag the tweet FakePromisesOfCongress.