Populism

Freebies are never 'free' and when political parties offer such schemes, they must be required to make the financing and trade-offs clear to voters, RBI Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) Member Ashima Goyal said on Sunday, adding this would reduce the temptation towards "competitive populism". Goyal further said a cost is imposed somewhere when governments provide freebies, but this is worth incurring for public goods and services that build capacity. "Freebies are never free... specially harmful are subsidies that distort prices," she told PTI in an interview. Noting that this hurts production and resource allocation and imposes large indirect costs, such as the water table falling in Punjab due to free electricity, Goyal said such freebies come at the cost of low quality health, education, air and water that hurt poor the most. "When parties offer schemes they must be required to make the financing and such trade-offs clear to voters. This would reduce the temptation towards ...

T N Ninan reads from another commentator's notes on one prime minister and observes how eerily similar they sound to the description of some others

How support for left and right-leaning parties is changing in social composition

If you want to understand today's politics, read novels about the fall of Rome. Populism is democracy's oldest and most enduring disease

The conflict between liberty and equality is often central to ideological differences among social scientists

Populist leaders may have lost their most prominent champion, but their economic, social and political grievances remain potent

Book review of I Am the People

Populism is linked with weaker economic growth in the long-term, which could weigh on India's rich equity valuations, says bank.

The economic slowdown has taken a toll on the state's industrial growth and consequently the collection of taxes, which is further putting a strain on its finances

States should resist the temptation to hand out free electricity

The two offer the same package - personality cult, populist schemes, inflated claims, etc - but the hard edge to BJP's communalism is missing in AAP, a difference we should celebrate, writes T N Ninan

Examples of populist measures are sometimes controversial such as exemptions from indirect tax given to ladies' hand bags and bindis and to imports of professional equipment by journalists

Our understanding and response to the populist challenges need to be suitably differentiated, a fact which seems to be overlooked in the large and growing flurry of writings on populism

A close look at statistics belies the argument that the losers of globalisation are revolting against the elites