Elections and Freebies

Four states and one Union territory of the country are going to have assembly elections-

• Assam : Two phases’ 04th April and 11th April, 2011 for 126 assembly seats,
• Kerala : 13th April, 2011 for all the 140 assembly seats,
• Tamil Nadu : 13th April, 2011 for all the 234 assembly seats,
• West Bengal : Six phases’ 18th, 23rd ,27th April, 03rd ,07th and 10th May for 294 seats,
• Puducherry ( Union Territory) : 13th April,2011 for all the 30 assembly seats,

but Tamil Nadu state has catch the eyes of experts and public due to political parties trend of offering freebies to the state voters if they comes in to power, in there respective manifestoes, it has seen that political parties skip to fight election on to issue base instead they woo voters by freebies, and offer of freebies is simply just purchasing votes of public.
     Tamil Nadu state political power moves around two parties, M Karunanidhi’s Dravida Munnettra Kazhagam (DMK), since 1969 DMK is headed by M Karunanidhi and All India Anna Dravida Munnettra Kazhagam (AIADMK) led by J. Jayalalithaa. Despite election code of conduct comes into force, political parties not follows the code practically, thus election commission needs to jumps and take action against them, ruling alliance especially DMK is its latest example when actor Khushboo who was on publicity campaign for DMK with the caravan of eight cars, two cases’ have been registered against her plus cars have been seized, plus election commission bar DMK to distribute among public free lakhs of colour television sets, below is glimpse of three political parties that have announced freebies for public in there respective manifestos :
DMK, if comes into power –

• Will distribute free laptops to the students,
• For issuing passes age will reduce to 58 years from present 60 years to old age persons,
• Will distribute free rice,
• Free medical insurance policies to the state public,

AIADMK, if comes into power –

• Ration card holders of state will get free rice of 20 kg per month,
• Free medical insurance policies,
• Poor women of state will get free gold Mangal Sutter of 4 grams,
• Six months maternity leave,
• Allowance of 12,000 rupees to pregnant women,
• Families living under the poverty line will get free 20 liters mineral water every day,
• Public will get cheap cable connections,

along with above coded it has freebies items like laptops, fans and mixies as offers once it comes into power.
B.J.P., if comes into power –

• Students of 11th and 12th standards of state will get free laptops,
• In a year two times students will get pencils and pens,
• Poor students of state will get free medical check ups once in a year,

It is worth mentioning here that although parties have announced freebies to the public from laptops to rice, free medical insurance policies, but they will not available to them free of cost and they will distribute after paying the cost to the manufacturers or dealers, which will put hole in the government corpus or perhaps they have other sources of income to pay the cost of goods, it needs to be investigate but for public servants of government its not possible to work against any ruling party, hence it will never comes into light.