This refers to the editorial, “Targeted subsidies regime” (December 30). Ideally, after independence, reservations and subsidies should have been short-term measures, but they have became a tool for vote-bank politics. This is why no political party has the courage to speak of cutting down or reviewing the provisions, leave alone doing away with them. The bitter truth is that the real beneficiaries of the two instruments of social and economic upliftment have not been the deserving — the downtrodden and the poor.
Earlier, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had requested lPG customers to voluntarily forego subsidy on their lPG cylinders, in response to which about 57,000 people did give up their lPG subsidy. Placing the threshold income for lPG at `10 lakh is going to make little difference in country’s huge annual subsidy bill that is estimated at Rs 2,67,000 crore.
Anyway, charity must begin at home. let our Members of Parliament set an example by paying the market price of the food served to them at heavily subsidised rates in the canteen and forego all kinds of other subsidies being availed by them.