The Politics of Freebies

Creating dependencies in the name of empowerment.

- Samriti Dhatwalia

P olitical parties have always found a way to lure people by providing them with gifts in exchange for votes. Everybody does like one great gift, but if this gift takes something out of your own pockets, then it is something to be concerned about. India stands at the number one position in giving out freebies to people in order to entice votes from them. Being the largest democracy in the world, India has easily influenced its neighbouring nations in South Asia and Southeast Asia to start persuading their people to vote for them in return for a gift.

Copying others has always been an easy task, but one needs to understand that the birth country itself calls it a Revadi Culture.

Economics Behind These Subsidies

To understand the concept of subsidies/freebies, one needs to understand how money actually flows in the economy. Here we shall focus on the macroeconomic theory of economics. The money that the government has comes from taxes collected from its citizens, and this money is used for the development of the nation, including both tangible and intangible assets. To make this money come into use, we, as citizens, have to elect our representatives, who will further work according to the aspirations of the people and the country.

During the election process, these so-called representatives come into the public space with their manifestos and promises on how their party will work for us.

But somehow, we have made these politicians think that we are too easy to be sold. We have portrayed ourselves in a manner that they can buy us by providing us favours out of our own pockets.