FREEBIES AND WELFARE SCHEMES A FISCAL DISASTER & SUGGESTED FRAMEWORK FOR ELECTION FINANCING

Election financing, freebies and welfare schemes, when prefaced with the democratic structure incorporated in our Constitution and the democratic way of functioning that have taken away the credentials of democracy and seem to blur the democratic system and the underlying spirit. We have made hundreds of laws, rules, regulations, schemes, guidelines but failed to appreciate the fact that without fairness and somewhat seeming transparency in the framework of the democracy we have been following for the last seventy-two years or so which is like painting one's own face with different colors to evade identification of the flow of funds in the election financing besides those official permitted by the Government of India. Freebies born thereafter as a kin of the election financing now reached a stage where there is a storm brewing. This erodes our performance and achievements with democracy as our base of governance.