Every year, ahead of the Tamil month of Aadi (July 15 to August 15), retail stores in Tamil Nadu—selling everything from textiles to jewellers to home appliances—flood the market with “Aadi thallupadi” (discount offers), promising the lowest prices of the year to tempt customers. During this discount season, one can witness hundreds of buyers—all eager to grab the discounted items before they fly off the shelves—lining up before the stores even before they open for business. Come election season, Tamil Nadu’s political parties tempt voters with similar schemes that go by the name of election manifestos, and are crammed with freebies and unviable promises aimed solely at grabbing votes. It is no different this year as the ruling AIADMK and its main challenger, the DMK, vied with one another to roll out a slew of promises—many of them near replicas or slight variations of what the opponent promised.
Heading the list of competing promises is a monthly assistance to homemakers announced by the DMK. While the DMK promised them Rs 1,000 a month, the AIADMK upped the figure to Rs 1,500 and even gave the scheme a name—‘kula vilakku’, or the one who lights up the household. Poor Kamal Haasan, who originally mooted the idea of salaries for homemakers months ago, had to play catch-up with a promise of Rs 3,000 as privileged pay for women. The AIADMK’s promise of a washing machine and solar cooker too underlined this trend of women-only schemes. Indeed, in a state where female voters (3.18 crore) outnumber the males (3.08 crore), women were in the freebie crosshairs of all the parties.
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Soon the competition turned mind-boggling. When the DMK promised free travel in town buses for women, the AIADMK tried to match it with a 50 per cent concession. When the AIADMK promised six LPG cylinders a year, the DMK came up with a subsidy of Rs 100 for each cylinder. And as the Edappadi K. Palaniswami (EPS) government had already distributed a Covid relief of Rs 1,000 and a festival grant of Rs 2,500 for Pongal in January, the DMK assured a one-time relief of Rs 4,000 for loss of livelihood due to the pandemic. M.K. Stalin’s party even promised to bring down the prices of petrol, diesel and milk.
The parties also seem unmindful of the financial costs their promises would entail for the cash-strapped government. For example, the monthly allowance of Rs 1,000 promised by the DMK to homemakers would cost the exchequer Rs 24,000 crore a year and the AIADMK’s promise of Rs 1,500 would cost Rs 36,000 crore year. “Imagine what this would do to the finances of a state already reeling under a public debt of more than Rs 5 lakh crore,” says former health secretary R. Poornalingam. “When the state government is underwriting the loss-making electricity board and transport corporations to the tune of more than Rs 50,000 crore, where will it find additional resources to fund these promises? The only way out would be to increase liquor prices, property registration charges and motor vehicle taxes, all of which will impact the common man and business sentiment in the state.”
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The race to waive loans is proving to be another sucker punch in the state’s financial belly. The EPS government’s move to write off cooperative farm loans is likely to cost Rs 30,000 crore, and the promised waiver of educational loans by both the parties could send the bill spiralling by another Rs 14,000 crore. “The biggest joke is the promise of government jobs to almost every family,” says a senior IAS officer. “Already there are more than three lakh vacancies in government departments, which no government wants to fill for fear of footing additional salaries. There are huge arrears of pensions and allowances for employees of transport corporations, yet they are announcing free bus travel for women!”
Those defending the freebie culture say it fits into the larger canvass of welfarism and social justice that the two Dravidian parties have espoused all these years. “Do not forget that when M.G. Ramachandran implemented the free nutritious meal scheme for children, he was accused of making beggars out of them. It was only after a decade that it was recognised as a farsighted programme that stopped drop-outs from schools, encouraged more girl children to turn up at schools and improved the health of entire generations,” says K. Pandiarajan, minister of Tamil culture, who is confident that the allowances announced in the present manifesto would improve the quality of life for poor women, especially those in rural areas.
A manifesto was not quite as powerful as an election weapon before the 2006 assembly polls. This changed when then DMK chief M. Karunanidhi promised a free colour TV for every home as well as 20 kg of rice at Rs 2 per kilo from ration shops. When doubts were raised over whether the two promises could be implemented, then Union finance minister P. Chidambaram not only assured that the promises were doable, but also marketed the manifesto as the real hero of the 2006 election campaign. As J. Jayalalitha had already released the AIADMK manifesto and was busy campaigning for her party, she was unable to play catch up with the DMK’s promises. And the DMK managed to nose ahead and form a minority government with outside support from the Congress and the PMK.
In 2011, a chastened Jayalalitha played it smart and waited for the DMK to play its hand first. So, when the DMK promised either a mixer or a grinder for every kitchen, the AIADMK chief promised both, and also a table fan—and thus propelled her party to a majority. Perhaps a large number of voters never paused to wonder if they would have electricity to run these gadgets as the outgoing DMK’s term was marked by frequent and long power cuts, which proved to be one of the reasons for its fall in 2011.
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Tried and tested in two back-to-back elections, these documents, previously dismissed as mere ritual, came to occupy crucial mindspace among Tamil Nadu’s voters. “People even started to anticipate what freebie these two parties would come up with,” says Ramu Manivannan, professor of political science at the University of Madras. “In 2016, Jayalalitha’s promise of a subsidised scooty for women proved to be a winner. But her promise of free mobiles and free wifi remained unfulfilled, proving not all promises are kept. In 2006, Karunanidhi promised free houses and land for the landless, but left the scheme unfinished as free colour TV and inexpensive rice turned out to be more popular.”
Ultimately, the results on May 2 would reveal which manifesto comes out tops this time. And the next five years will show how much they bleed the state’s finances.
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Poll Pot
Full Marks To EPS
During his campaign across Tamil Nadu, CM E.K. Palaniswami has been accorded different kinds of welcome by farmers, housewives and party faithful. But one welcome at Nagpattinam town really took him by surprise—a group of young boys atop a building held placards with Tamil letters saying “Thank you EPS. We ‘arrears’ boys will vote only for AIADMK.” They were giving their thumbs up to the EPS government’s decision to give “all pass” to class 9, 10 and 11 students due to the pandemic.
Mirror Images
The DMK and AIADMK manifestos are near replicas of each other. And they seem to have used the same model, a smiling, dusky Tamil beauty, to sell their schemes to voters. Apparently, the two parties’ IT wings used the same Shutterstock image. In 2016, a wizened woman was shown in a DMK ad that made fun of Jayalalitha’s helicopter-hopping campaign. A few days later, the woman was seen praising Jayalalitha, thanking her for providing inexpensive meals through her Amma canteens.
By G.C. Shekhar in Chennai
