Another man’s poison

Vinod Mehta’s article (In defence of Sonia, September 1) fails to distinguish between effectively aiding the poor and attempting to do it in a manner that actually harms them. Thus, I distinguish between populism as an objective — where we worry about the poor — and populism as a means (where counterproductive policies are followed to aid the people but hurt them instead). Unfortunately, before the reforms which gained steam in 1991, we were into populist policies which had harmed the poor since low growth meant that we could not “pull up” the poor significantly above the poverty line, nor could we generate the growth-led revenues to undertake the social expenditures which we wanted to undertake to additionally help the poor. When some economists advocate a return to populist policies as a way of aiding the poor, I am reminded of the great economist John Kenneth Galbraith’s witty retort to Nobel Laureate Milton Friedman: The trouble with Milton’s prescriptions is that they have been tried. I applaud Mrs. Sonia Gandhi for her populist objectives. But I despair when she accepts bad advice and turns to populist policies to achieve them. There seems to be a consensus now that expanded food security bill expenditures will add to inflation and harm the poor and the lower middle class. Will the UPA government wake up in time and spew out this poison pill?