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| Announced and distributed laptops |
More than 20% of Indian population still living under below poverty line. Indian middle class stands at about 3-5% of the population. This is approximately 30.2 million people. The definition of middle class here is income between 10 to 20 dollars a day adjusted for purchasing power parity. It is the most common definition of middle class also used by the World Bank.
India's Lower class population is 30% of total population. According to Indian definition, middle class is 20% and Upper middle class is 7% of total population.
Now with such large number of population that is striving for their daily bread and butter, freebies are like at least something that they are getting for their votes. Otherwise they would be only casting their votes. The tradition that the politicians has made over decades, has made common people think that they don't do anything for them. That's why they are always ready to cast their votes for some goodies, freebies or you can call it bribe.
This is not only the case of common people, this tradition can be seen in almost every election that is being held in India at every level. 'Jila Panchayat Sadashya' who cast their votes to select 'Jila Panchayat Adhyaksha' takes around 2-5 lakhs based on competition. Selected BDC members takes 30-200 thousands to cast their votes for Adhyaksha. And this system goes further upward in the hierarchy.
These things start from a higher level than the lower level follows. For example in Uttar Pradesh, Mayawati takes around 1 crore to sell tickets of BSP candidates for MLA elections. She comes into power with the help of a large population of SC, ST votes. Now what happens when someone who has bought the MLA ticket and gets selected in his/her constituency, they will first recover the amount that they has given and then they try to save some more for next election. This is the bitter truth in India mostly in the Northern States.
The population that is not well educated and doesn't take interest in national or state politics is the driving part of selecting the government. They get their freebies and cast the votes or they will cast the votes to make the government that will later give the goodies after coming to power. Now what happens is they get the goodies but they don't get the development, jobs, infrastructure, power. And they can't get it either because the money government should invest on other things has been already invested for goodies and freebies. This should be kept in mind that only around 3% of India's population pay their income taxes.
In Uttar Pradesh Legislative Assembly election 2012, Samajwadi Party came to power because of the free Laptop and Bicycle. After they came to power they distributed Laptops to students who didn't know even A, B,C of computers. Around Rs, 2,858 crores were spent in 2013-14 for laptops. Later on, it was discovered that people with Akhilesh laptops are selling it for money. Now again Akhilesh Yadav has declared to distribute free smartphones if they will come to power in 2017 elections. Let's see what will happen.
J Jayalalitha and Mamata Banerjee, who despite allegations of corruption and poor governance, turned out to be voter favorites. It is the triumph of a new model of governance, which effectively offsets the damage caused by corruption and poor governance by distributing cash, goats, gold and free electricity.
This must be ended in Indian politics. Only a better constitution amendment can stop this for India as we have already lost our hopes on India's population. Modi government should make such a law that no one can spend hard-earned taxpayer's money on such things.
I hope you like this post. More to come, so stay connected.
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