When a political party or an alliance wins an election on the strength of a promise and does not deliver on it once elected to power, it amounts to short-changing the voters. It has happened often enough to take a stand on these promises of the moon. Who takes this stand, however, is unclear because the political parties look for winners, not morality.
Telangana’s Congress has not delivered on a host of campaign promises, nor has Andhra Pradesh’s victorious party. Delhi is setting up a committee to devise ways and means, including eligibility. And Maharashtra’s Mahayuti has not made any provision in Monday’s 2025-26 budget for increasing the stipend to women from Rs. 1,500 to 2,100.
This backtracking is just an example. Others could be Telangana implementing only free bus rides for women, hardly any evidence of bringing to fruition the Super Six in Andhra Pradesh. There is an exaggerated belief that, never mind the broken promises, the needy would always be suckered by the biggest promises. One day, there would be a blow back to such politics. And time it did.
Lured by cash doles
This is an alarming issue. If after three-quarters of a century of Independence, the voters have to be lured by cash doles, then the country has failed on the welfarism front. It ought not to be the case that the voters must depend on such doles when across the country all citizens get the same rights to education, health, and income. It is a serious governance failure.
Nor do governments, from the top to the gram panchayats, have the integrity to ensure that the citizens get the best bang for each buck paid as taxes collected diligently, spent prudently, and an even level of basic level of living is issued. This calls for integrity, especially when now almost anyone who buys soap pays the GST.
Before the GST era, it was some who paid taxes for the most. A tribal member in a remote hilly terrain got his pair of sheep and a goat from taxes. At that time, the tribal, too poor to even sustain an animal-like life, got it from taxes paid so that he benefitted. Now even the poor, 80-odd crore who get free rations, pay a GST for something or the other item bought.
From all accounts, the Mahayuti secured its resounding victory in the recent Assembly polls because it suddenly started the stipend scheme, Laadki Bahin Yojana, which favoured over 2.4 crore women within the age of 65 and promised that it would be hiked to Rs 2,100 per month. However, the provision for the upcoming fiscal is the same as the allocation in the present fiscal.
Alarm bells should ring
To their credit, it must be said that one sector that received the highest allocation is women’s welfare–about Rs. 32,000 cr. The funds for the Laadki Bahin Yojana are outside the purview of this allocation, but when the debt level peaks to nearly Rs 9 lakh crore, the alarm bells should ring.
Women who voted for the Mahayuti would certainly be sorely disappointed at the turn of events but would continue to get their Rs 1,500 per month except that some eight lakh women have been excluded for being ineligible; it was implemented five months before the Assembly polls only to attract the female voters and later peppered with promises of higher payouts.
These competitive promises are obviously not easy to deliver upon because the states, even if they are progressive and progressing, have weak purses. In Delhi, the voters set their eyes on BJP’s promise of higher doles than what the ruling party had delivered upon; after the first cabinet meeting, the chief minister had spoken of an empty exchequer.
Though Ajit Pawar had claimed that after long stints of handling the Finance portfolio, he knew that a promise of Rs 2,100 per month was a deliverable; when he read the budget speech, he made nary a reference to the assurance listed in the manifesto. Is it that prudence surfaced after the elections were over and the chickens were counted? It seems so.
There is a strong tendency among candidates to pay cash to voters, which, in effect, amounts to buying a vote, which amounts to electoral malpractice, but all concerned have turned a blind eye to it. In a wider interpretation, doesn’t this non-delivery on tall promises amount to another morally reprehensible practice when parties cannot keep them? I think it does.
