Subsidies have become synonym with governments’ people appeasing policies. We can attribute it mainly to Congress Govt. as it has ruled for a longer period. There is subsidy on domestic petroleum products, on food grains (recent Food Security Bill), on electricity, water etc. The result is that many agencies are always in a deficit which keeps on increasing. A stage reaches when the increase in price becomes exorbitant like increase in price of cooking gas. If the load on economy due to the unwanted subsidies is increasing then why government is not taking actions to do away with them or regularise it properly so that only the needy gets it. And when any such move is initiated opposition parties attack the government over its decision to gradually do away with the LPG subsidy, calling it “cruel” and demanding that the proposal be withdrawn. Even the ongoing session of the Parliament was disrupted by the Congress led by K. C Venugopal raising the issue during the Zero Hour, saying it will adversely affect the common man and there was no justification of it when the crude oil prices had gone down. The party demanded its immediate withdrawal. The opposition members alleged that the steady increase in the LPG cylinder price by the government had been highest in the last six years. Describing the move as “anti-welfare”, they wondered what will be the “fate” of over 2.5 crore women given the connection for free. The Union Government had taken a decision to do away with the subsidy regime in March last to bring in transparency. Opposition parties even staged a walk-out from the House as they sought a response from the government. Today with individual income increasing manifold giving a high purchasing power with them to buy large array of consumables retaining of subsidy looks as if we have not come out of medieval era of shortages. Centre should discontinue the policies of freebies to retain the vote bank and people should also understand the need to pay actual prices and not burden the government to continue with such schemes.
