What is political will? I will try to explicate this notion and then try to show why it is so difficult for political parties to have this desirable quality. Political will is sometimes used to connote the genuineness of commitment to the welfare of the poor and the courage of a government to distance itself from the powerful. In this context, how does one judge the Rs 2-per-kilo-rice scheme of yesteryears introduced by NT Rama Rao of Andhra Pradesh? I propose that that scheme was merely populist, not because it tried to woo poor voters, but because it did not simultaneously distance itself from the powerful.

A government's policy has to be economically sound if it is to be imbued with politicalwill. If NTR had enforced a hard budget constraint, ie, made funds available for the Rs 2-per-kilo-rice scheme by cutting an equal amount of expenditure elsewhere, his actions would not have been populist. The scheme, however, did have significant welfare components. Where NTR went wrong was in introducing the scheme without regard to its fiscal consequences. Thus, not only were the existing subsidies, favours to interest groups continued, but the poor were also sought to be wooed.

One can site some other examples of political will (1) cutting back subsidies to the powerful to improve budget balances (2) opening up the economy to international competition even if that destroys entrenched domestic oligopolies (3) improving availability of basic education and health facilities to the poor without impairing the fisc. Clearly all of these are difficult choices and most certainly will have political repercussions.

Of all the political repercussions that political parties fear, the most important is loss ofpolitical support. It is naive to believe that a ruling party will show political will by implementing economically efficient policies, but which so damages its electoral prospects that it is voted out of office. Therefore, it is necessary to temper the requirement of political will in a government by the political economy constraints that it faces. I present below an attempt, which seeks to marry the economic and political aspects of policy-making.

The policy change that is proposed is the following: enforcing a hard budget constraint, reduce the subsidies being given to powerful interest groups and re-allocate the savings towards provision of basic health facilities to the poor. The policy is not populist since there will be no increase in total government expenditure. Further, it is an efficient policy since it promotes health of the population, which yields substantial social benefits and it reduces subsidies to the undeserving. Will such a policy prescription be implemented? That will depend on thechanges in political support that will emerge from it. I present some crude numbers to gauge the re-allocation of political support to the ruling party.

Basing my computations on the `1997 Government of India Discussion Paper on Subsidies,' I take into account only the subsidies given for the following: (1) Agriculture and allied activities (2) Irrigation and flood control (3) Power, for both the Union and state governments. Assuming a very mild 5 per cent reduction in the rate of subsidisation, which presently is as high 87.5 per cent, will involve huge savings in expenditures. If these expenditures are re-allocated for primary health care, we would not violate the hard budget constraint and yet contribute to the welfare of the poor. The table below gives some details.

From a pure public interest point of view, the fact that almost 59 million persons will benefit from a mere 5 per cent cut in rate of subsidisation is compelling enough. However, the ruling party will be more interested in how muchpolitical support it will lose by cutting back subsidies of interest groups and how that balances out with the gain in support from these welfare measures. It is apparent that all 59 million beneficiaries will not vote for the government: some will be below voting age and some may not exercise their franchise. On the other hand, interest groups are important not only for the votes their members cast in favour of the ruling party, but for the total votes they bring to the ruling party through their contributions to elections funds, vote buying, lobbying, etc.

Since we are referring to subsidies going to large farmers only, we consider only the number of such farmers: there were 1.67 million large agricultural holdings in 1995. If each of these farmers brought 35 votes to the ruling party the advantage of potential 59 million beneficiaries vanishes (1.67 million times 35 almost equals 59 million). So is all lost? Not quite. The computations in the previous paragraph merely indicate the difficulties in theprocess of providing for the welfare of the genuinely deprived. However, there are other avenues left to explore: (1) The reduction in the rate of subsidisation assumed in the table was very modest. It may be possible to be more aggressive on this score and consider 10 per cent or even 20 per cent reduction in the rate of subsidisation. (2) The subsidies that were considered for the computations in the table constitute less than 50 per cent of total subsidies given out by the central and state governments. It may be possible to target other subsidies for reduction.

The whole idea behind this article was to link up demands for political will on the part of the government with its electoral compulsions. The approach suggested above offers a way for a government which is interested in ushering in reforms with a human face. The approach is not without pitfalls; but then ignoring the welfare of deprived sections of the population persistently is nothing short of disaster.

The author is RBI Ambedkarprofessor of political economy at the department of economics, University of Mumbai