The current uninformed and political debate on freebies reminds me of a similar fuss during the early years of reform in 1992 and 1993. The Narasimha Rao-Manmohan Singh duo had been left with no option by Rajiv Gandhi’s spending spree during 1985-89 but to stop spending at once.
Subsidies were drastically pruned by them and the Congress was in turmoil. Two of its leading members, Arjun Singh and N D Tiwari, even quit the party to form their own party. Why, even Manmohan Singh, who was finance minister, offered to resign if he was part of the problem. Rao said “don’t
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