The real cost of freebies

The actual cost of such expenditure can be gauged from the state of India's infrastructure, government-run schools and hospitals

It is likely that the ongoing “freebies” debate will not yield anything substantial in the near term, but the wider discussion on how the government spends offers hope for the future. Usually, the interest in such subjects remains limited to pages like these. This column, for instance, had raised the issue of subsidies in January in the context of promises being made by political parties before the last round of Assembly elections. The matter got more attention in recent weeks after Prime Minister Narendra Modi talked about it, and the Supreme Court decided to hear a petition in this regard