Direct cash transfer to over five lakh Amphan-hit families in West Bengal is what chief minister Mamata Banerjee would do by way of government support to mitigate the sufferings of the cyclone-hit families. She is said to have a taken the advice of Nobel Laureate Abhijit Banerjee before making the announcement on Friday. While the Opposition belittled her offer by saying she had made empty offers in the past, the positive side of this initiative cannot be ignored. Money, once given, would reach directly into the hands of the affected people. This means middlemen – in the form of agents of politicos and local government functionaries – would not take a cut from the money on offer.
The central government’s Rs 20 lakh crore stimulus package to re-energise the down-and-out national economy, announced in five tranches by finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman recently might or might not see the desired results. It remains to be seen how such flow of money would work in a positive manner at the ground level or looted right and left as had been the case in the past. One good thing PM Modi did after he came to power in Delhi in 2014 was the opening of bank accounts for the poor families. Most such families got something by way of reimbursement of subsidies etc. In other words, now people are getting money from the government, unlike a scenario of the past when people had to pay taxes to the government in a one-way traffic. Affluent economies that have earnings from oil wealth etc could afford to pay their citizens money in regular doses. The rulers shared the benefits from the natural wealth with the people, though in small sums. India has huge coal deposits, but it adopts the short-cut of importing coal.
In a nation of 1.3 billion plus people, some 80 per cent of them are of poor and lower middle-class background, and feeding them would require huge amounts every month. Still, the partly free and partly subsidized ration schemes for BPL families are the telling signs of the times. When a government spends money hugely for upkeep of the poor by way of giving them free food, chances are also that a generation of indolent people will make the nation poorer by doing no work. Governments that come to power for five years have a one-point agenda, namely to create vote banks out of various sections of the people so that they can win the next polls and remain in power. But national interests should remain paramount.