It's all in the money.

"When politicians take up the cause of the people, industrialists complain they are becoming populists. They forget that it is a politicians duty in a democracy to represent the people," wrote A Maira. "Capitalist enterprises are designed to produce profits for their investors by improving efficiency and extracting economic surpluses from their operations." Maximizing 'shareholder value' was a good idea to instill discipline among CEOs of companies but today "it does more harm than good", wrote J Nocera. "It has widened income inequality." "It explains why so few companies subsidize the local symphony or art museum any more." "The dharma of institutions of democratic governance, on the other hand, is to ensure fairness in society and equity among stakeholders," wrote Maira. But Homo economicus is guided by a sense of fairness, wrote Prof R Hausmann. "We are the most cooperative species on earth because our feelings evolved to sustain cooperation, to put 'us' before 'me'. These feelings include guilt shame, outrage, empathy, sympathy, dread, disgust, and a whole cocktail of other sentiments." Technology is increasing inequality by replacing humans with machines so that the highly educated are accumulating more wealth while workers in traditional industries are seeing a fall in wages," wrote Prof K Basu. This has resulted in tribalism as people vote for populist politicians in anger. So will politicians be able to create a more equitable society? For the coming election in Chhattisgarh the Congress is promising to waive loans to farmers, increase minimum support price for grains, halve electricity bills, free healthcare, pensions to farmers and stipends to young people. At the same time it will ban alcohol in the state which will reduce revenue. Banks are staring at bad loans of up to Rs 1.74 trillion from electricity producers because distribution companies refuse to buy electricity at higher rates if they are prevented from charging customers. To resolve the crisis in the power industry the government devised a scheme, called UDAY, whereby state governments would take over 75% of the debts of power companies and finance it by issuing bonds. The Congress intends to make it worse. Ban on alcohol encourages smuggling and illicit brewing, which converts taxes into profits for criminals. Why is Congress resorting to promises which will destroy finances of the state? Because the BJP has managed to corner all the funds for elections. When money is coming from dubious sources you have sold yourself to them. How can politicians regulate their paymasters?