Freebies

An economics professor in the first test averaged the grades and everyone got a B. The students who studied hard were upset, while those who studied less were happy.

The students who studied little started studying even less, and ones who studied hard wanted a free ride too, and so they studied little. The second test average was a D. Nobody was happy, but the trend continued. When the third test rolled around, the average was an F. And finally all failed.

This small story is just a reminder for those politicians who are promising and winning elections in India by distributing freebies like free water, free electricity, free ration, cash benefits to people at the cost of exchequer.

And how are they getting money to be so benevolent? No government can give anything to anybody without taking first from somebody else.

Taxation on fuels and other commodities, disinvestment and selling government bonds are normal sources of revenue. One of them is Income Tax, but the percentage of income tax payers is just 2.5% and even among them, less than 4% pay 60% of the total income tax.

The fact remains that you can’t legislate the poor into prosperity by legislating the wealthy out of prosperity. You can’t multiply wealth by dividing it. You have to make the poor capable and independent, and not at the mercy of government..

Just imagine a situation when the prosperous people too get an idea that it does no good to work, because somebody else is going to derive the benefit of their hard labour.

There is plent to discuss and write about it, but I’ll conclude with a statement once made by our former Prime Minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee,
“Don’t give anything free to the public. Only education, justice and treatment should be given free. Freebies make people lazy and country weak.”

But unfortunately his own partymen are not following it to remain relevant and politically correct.

–Kaushal Kishore