March 5, 2013 9:09AM # Buying Votes with Taxpayers’ Money — in India By [David Boaz](https://www.cato.org/people/david-boaz) --- SHARE When it comes to India, *Washington Post* reporter Rama Lakshmi seems to have no trouble recognizing that [government benefits just might attract votes](http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/indian-finance-minister-promises-to-trim-deficit-push-growth/2013/02/28/42806bb0-81a2-11e2-a671-0307392de8de_story.html): > Trying to rekindle the fire of India’s economy, Finance Minister P. Chidambaram promised Thursday to rein in a runaway deficit even as he raised spending on welfare schemes that the government hopes will woo voters in elections scheduled for next year.… > > > “The finance minister faced two counter-veiling pressures: to present a populist, voter-friendly budget and also control the huge fiscal deficit,” said Vir Sanghvi, a political analyst. “What he presented was a ‘this-is-the-best-we-can-manage-under-the-circumstances’ kind of a budget.... He is hoping that the economy will improve and prices will come down by the time of the election. That is a big political gamble.” > > > Chidambaram promised to increase spending on rural welfare schemes, rural roads and jobs, food guarantees for the poor, women’s safety programs, tax breaks on loans for first-time home buyers and a women’s bank. Is it really impossible to suspect that similar programs might have similar effects in the United States? ##### Related Tags [Government and Politics](https://www.cato.org/government-politics) [![Creative Commons License](/build/cato_2020/images/creative-commons.svg)](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/) This work is licensed under a [Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/).