Of late there has been a lot of hullabaloo in the media and civil society about ' freebies' being doled out / promised by parties. It should be made mandatory for political parties to disclose the financing and trade-offs required to the voters for any freebies offered as there is no such thing as a free lunch in this world. Apart from adversely impacting production and resource allocation, offering freebies also leads to imposition of high indirect taxes and environmental damage among other repercussions ; take the instance of Punjab where successive governments with their offer of free power have led to the state's water table falling to dangerously low levels. The PM very cleverly used the term 'revadi culture' to diss the opposition's 'free everything' electoral promises conveniently forgetting the fact that the BJP is the progenitor of these vacuous offers. Supreme Court intervention is a must to root out this culture which gnaws at the innards of the economy. Politicians certainly don't pay a single dime for the freebies from their own pockets, everything is paid for by honest taxpayers.
