India is a welfare state and the time has not yet come to stop welfare measures for the people, leaders of various political parties said on Monday, even as the BJP leader on the panel argued that there should be a distinction between welfare initiatives and the culture of free. .
The leaders were speaking at a panel discussion on “Indian Electoral Democracy@75: Looking Back, Thinking Forward,” organized by Lokniti-CSDS in association with Konrad Adenauer Stiftung, a German foundation.
Leaders of BJP, Congress, Aam Aadmi Party, NCP and Samajwadi Party who participated in the discussion agreed that India is a welfare state.
The Supriya Shrinate of Congress questioned why government allowances are called incentives when they go to the rich and are called gifts when they go to the poor. While Shrinate argued that India had not reached a stage where no government could turn away from social protection measures, and that the time was not even right to debate it, BJP’s Shazia Ilmi argued. argued that social protection measures and gifts are different.
Ilmi said Prime Minister Narendra Modi is popular among the poor for his initiatives on their behalf.
Mario Voigt, a leader of Germany’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU), who was also on the panel, said government initiatives should be aimed at empowering citizens and maintaining social order, not making people dependent. people entirely of theirs.
During the roundtable, moderated by CSDS Associate Professor Hilal Ahmed, Juhie Singh from the Samajwadi Party and Seema Malik from the NCP spoke about the increase in women’s participation in the electoral process as a sign of strengthening democracy. Malik attributed the increase in the voting percentage to voter literacy which has increased over the past few years.
Shrinate warned that it was India’s democracy that gave the country a place in the high table, and any attempt to weaken democracy will be detrimental to the country.
AAP’s Saurabh Bharadwaj said India had succeeded in instilling the roots of democracy in its culture itself.
The event saw the release of the book “Elections in India: An Overview”, by Sanjay Kumar, professor and co-director of Lokniti, a research program at CSDS.
