Bicycles and goats work, but laptops are dicey.

In response to a request by the Electoral Commission of India the Ministry of Home Affairs has prepared a note for the cabinet suggesting that bribing voters during elections will be made a cognizable offence. Currently bribing voters is a non-cognizable offence under sections 171B/171E, which attracts a prison term of one year and/or a fine. But if it is made cognizable then the police will be allowed to start an investigation or make an arrest without a warrant. Very pious indeed, but what constitutes bribery of voters? The ministry wants to outlaw distribution of bundles of cash, or alcohol to men and saris to women, a few days before an election in an effort to buy their votes. But this is a very narrow definition. Mr Nitish Kumar promised bicycles to all girl students in Bihar which increased female attendance in schools and made him very popular. Trouble is that elections come round every 5 years and, having raised people's expectations, you have to go one better. So Mr Kumar is now thinking of promising tablets and laptops, as his buddy Mr Akilesh Yadav did in UP. Problem with that is that Mr Yadav's father, Mulayam Singh now blames the laptop scheme for the thrashing received by his party in the parliamentary elections last May at the hands of the BJP who took 71 out of 80 seats in UP. These laptops, ironically called ' Mulayam wala laptop ' in UP, are being sold online for Rs 14,000. The original cost was Rs 19,000. Ms Jayalalithaa was even more generous. She promised mixies, grinders, fans, milch cows, goats, solar powered greenhouses and marriage assistance for women, which included Rs 25,000 in cash, 4 gram gold coin and household items. She won an absolute majority in assembly elections and then promised the same for the Lok Sabha elections in May last year. Here her party won 37 seats. But nothing comes for free. The Tamil Nadu government has run up a debt of over Rs 800 billion which will rise to over Rs 1 trillion by 2016, when the next assembly elections are due. To increase its revenues the government sells alcohol, including local hooch in plastic pouches, through the Tamil Nadu State Marketing Corporation or TASMAC. However, all this is loose change compared to the massive bribery by the Congress in 2008 to increase the number of its MPs from 145 in 2004 to 206 in 2009. The NREGA scheme, the waiver of loans to farmers and the Sixth Pay Commission cost trillions of rupees, caused double digit inflation and resulted in a soaring fiscal deficit. The Congress crashed from 206 to a meager 44 seats in last May's elections. Poor fellows. People are so fickle.