India State Elections 2023: It’s Raining Revdis!

It’s the old familiar theme when elections come around. And they have arrived at five states in India to elect new state assemblies. It’s a good time as any to review Prime Minister Modi’s phrase of revdi culture (culture of freebies) first used against the Aam Aadmi Party of Arvind Kejriwal to criticize his promise of free power to the people of Delhi many years ago. But really, is this even a new thing in India? Free power has formed the staple of election promises mainly to farmers in many states across India for decades. The harmful effects are there for all to see in the depletion of the ground water table, nowhere more glaring than in Punjab, the land of five rivers.

It is a good time to review revdi culture, not merely as election sops and promises but in the area of more enduring policymaking as well. And it’s not just free power, but freebies of all kinds, from food and education to healthcare and dole in general.

Among the five states going to the polls this time, we have three states in the Hindi heartland two of which are ruled by the INC (Indian National Congress) and one by the BJP. Besides these, Mizoram in the east and Telangana in the south are also to hold state assembly elections this time. Why I mention the three Hindi belt states separately is because all three are relatively backward in economic development compared to many other regions in India. Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan in particular form part of what have long been known as the BIMARU states of India (BIMARU means sick folk in Hindi) as I have been writing on my blog. Chhattisgarh is a relatively new and young state, carved out of Madhya Pradesh in 2011 and comprises some of the most backward districts, rich as it might be in natural resources and minerals.

Each of these three states have grown economically in the past 5 to 10 years, growing at rates between 7.16% and 8.23% in FY 23 alone. However, they still lag behind many other states in India especially those of the south and the west. The key to understanding why this is so is to look at the human development indicators in these regions. Almost on all parameters of human development, from life expectancy and infant and maternal mortality rates, to literacy, education and poverty rates, we can see that there is plenty to be done in improving the lives of the people who live in Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan. These states also have fewer urban habitations, and as a consequence, fewer opportunities for higher education, for business and commerce, and for gainful employment.

As with the rest of India, these states are also hugely dependent on agriculture for employment and people’s livelihoods, with industry and services providing most of the economic growth. That said, it would also be true that these states offer little hope of changing the status quo, because of the lack of development. Perhaps Madhya Pradesh fares a little better on this count thanks to core sector industries such as public sector steel enterprises that were set up here soon after India’s independence. This certainly helped large urban agglomerations to be formed, which in turn helps to attract more investment in education, healthcare and indeed in industry. As India modernizes and makes economic progress on many fronts, states such as Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan need to catch up, else their people will continue to migrate to other regions for education and work – as do the people of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh – and the states themselves will continue to drag the country behind.

Against this backdrop, we have the promises and policies of various parties to consider. From what little the media has reported on the election manifestos of the main parties, INC and BJP, it appears that freebies are all the rage this election season. What’s more, in a bid to attract more women voters, certain freebies are being announced as schemes for women empowerment! Madhya Pradesh already has a very popular Ladli Laxmi scheme (beloved Laxmi) for the education of girls, through which the government offers scholarships to girls who continue to pursue education and do not drop out. Now, they have also introduced a Ladli Behna scheme (beloved younger sister) Scheme which promises Rs 1000/- every month to women in every household, and they claim this to be women empowerment! It doesn’t take much to see why the first scheme might at least aim to empower women in the long term, and why the second is a freebie, a sop, a revdi, or what you will. It is just a free cash transfer that isn’t conditional on fulfilling any desired education or healthcare outcome for the woman or her family.

Further, it is being reported in media that because of the popularity of this Ladli Behna scheme in Madhya Pradesh, the BJP central leadership had no choice but to include Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chauhan in their election campaign, when they have otherwise avoided projecting him as a CM candidate. It is hardly surprising that political fortunes revolve around the various political constituencies and their votes. Looking at what various political parties have promised in their election manifestos, one can see that they have all pandered to farmers and the poor, women voters and civil servants, large voter bases, all. Congress Party’s pledge to return to the Old Pension Scheme based on defined benefits as opposed to defined contributions, is a disaster in the making.

All this is not to say that freebies and election sops are not prevalent elsewhere in India. Turning to Telangana, a southern state going to elections as well, it is reported that the BRS government there has also practised the politics of revdi culture. Over years, its flagship schemes, Rythu Bandhu (farmers’ friend – an investment scheme) and Rythu Bima (farmers’ insurance – a life insurance scheme) have been hits with farmers and have benefitted 70 lakh farmers in the state. Rythu Bandhu alone has cost the Telangana state government Rs 72,000 crores and has now been put on hold by the Election Commission for violating the pre-election model code of conduct. In the competitive war of freebies, strange things can happen. The Congress is reportedly promising more of these in its recently released election manifesto for the state, besides the favourite policy of all political parties: farm loan waivers up to Rs 2 lakh. Political parties are also showering money for girls’ weddings, land for new homes along with construction funds as well.

If all this sounds as if political parties don’t wish for people to work for a living at all, but forever depend on political patronage, it is because it is so. Little wonder India’s unemployment levels are as high as they are. Don’t get me wrong; I am not one of those who argues that welfare schemes keep people from working. However, I do think that governments ought to aim for ways to make their people more educated, skilled and productive members of society, not poor, uneducated and dependent on dole. There are policies even in welfare schemes that can help achieve higher goals and set people – including women – on their paths to self-reliance.

For this, we have to return to human development indicators. According to RBI data on state economic indicators, on most human development indicators, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh perform the worst, followed by Rajasthan and Telangana. Some of these data are not updated to the latest year or even to the pre-Covid year of 2019-2020, but I think the data would follow similar patterns: that there is a trend of improvement, but relatively speaking these states still fall behind. Which means that they need to do much more in order to catch up with the rest of India. And I would imagine that the better way to achieve this is through better investment in areas that are critical to human development, i.e., education and healthcare.

Which brings us to the public spending on education and healthcare at the state level, and whether it is adequate to the uphill task and goal to be achieved. On reading through these states’ economic surveys and budgets for 2022-23 available online, I find no reason for encouragement, except perhaps Chhattisgarh’s spend on school education at Rs. 16,522 crores which works out to 5.71% of GSDP (Gross State Domestic Product). Unfortunately, the state’s spend on healthcare at Rs. 4,712 crores is merely 1.62% of GSDP.

For Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan, I could find only the public healthcare spends which are at 2.16% and 2.5% of their GSDP respectively. In Telangana, perhaps there is something to the revdi and sops culture; public spending on education and healthcare are both quite low, coming in at 2.62% and 1.54% of GSDP. Like Chhattisgarh, Telangana too is a young state carved out of the erstwhile Andhra Pradesh as recently as 2014-15. However, the reason the state is still ahead is because it comprises the most developed parts of the former state, including the capital, Hyderabad, and its adjoining regions. Therefore, it is still continuing to reap the benefits of all the former years of investment. But unless it focuses on these critical areas, the state could soon deplete all its human capital and development, before having to start afresh all over again. I discovered that most of these states like to club their education and healthcare spends as part of overall social welfare spending or under what is euphemistically called “development spending”. With this attitude, it’s little wonder education and healthcare don’t get the priority they deserve; rather the focus is on freebies and dole.

Mizoram in the north-east of India is yet another state going to elections this year. Being a small state, it doesn’t attract the usual attention other states do while electing their leaders. However, this year’s fierce tribal flare-ups in Manipur are likely to have an effect in Mizoram, many believe. Thanks to years of Christian missionary investment in education in the region, Mizos are generally a literate and educated people, and enjoy decent health as well. Mizoram seems to have much better human development indicators (where available, since RBI data does not capture these across all parameters, for smaller northeastern states). Like much of the northeast, it used to be a Congress party stronghold but has perhaps changed over time, with more regional parties entering the fray. The incumbent government is run by the Mizo National Front, and one doesn’t know the extent of anti-incumbency, if any, from the lack of media reporting from the region.

As these state elections conclude today and we wait for the results on December 3, 2023, we ought to bear in mind that next year is the mega-election of them all. Voting at the state level is quite different from voting at the national level, even if the BJP is pitching everything on Modi’s charisma.

One wonders, with political parties offering freebies and revdis at election time, when the electorate will ever wisen up and demand better and more sensible policies. Unfortunately, policies get made at election time in India, and the rest of the political term is spent fulfilling election promises.

This too is another vicious cycle that the world’s largest democracy must find its way out of. ????

Postscript: I had shared a post on LinkedIn and Twitter on how difficult Google and unprofessional idiot bosses at Perfect Relations had made my search for links to add to this blog post after I had finished writing it, when Google served me the the proper links to the documents such as State Economic Surveys and Budgets that I have cited in the piece, while I was still writing it.

Worse, they kept showing me links in Hindi, when I think and write in English, and even when links were in English, the documents were in Hindi! This was particularly problematic in the case of Rajasthan, which is why I have had to share a link to a site that features the chapters from the Economic Survey in English. If you click on the English document shown below all the chapter links, you will still find a Hindi document!

This is nothing but mischief and interference in my work by unprofessional Perfect Relations idiot bosses in cahoots with their cronies in RK Swamy/BBDO, Chennai. Two unprofessional organisations that I quit working for ages ago and have nothing to do with; both ought not to be in the corporate world.

This article originally appeared on my blog on November 30, 2023.