NEW DELHI: Just before village council elections, southern Tamil Nadu state Chief Minister Jayalalitha went all out to gain favour with rural voters. Schoolgirls received laptops. Farm workers got cows and goats. Homemakers were given spice grinders and fans.

The price tag for the giveaway, which started in 2011 and continues today: Rs20 billion ($322 million) in a state of about 70 million people. Freebies are a fact of life in Indian politics, and items like livestock are only part of it. All three parties seen as the front-runners in upcoming elections have enticed voters with subsidies on electricity, cooking gas or grain.

The largesse could give sputtering growth a short-term boost, but there are growing concerns that the subsidise-everything mentality they represent will damage government finances and the economy.

Growth is expected to be less than five per cent in the 2013-14 fiscal year, far below the 8pc rate the country averaged in the past 10 years.

India’s Election Commission said this month it plans to require political parties to explain how they will pay for any “welfare measures” announced in the run-up to the vote, to be held by May.

Economists have taken issue with a slew of new subsidies announced by the government, which is headed by the beleaguered Congress party. An expansion of India’s cooking gas subsidy will cost nearly $805m, straining public coffers.

‘’If you are subsidising 97 per cent of the population, you are basically subsidising people who are paying for it themselves,” Raghuram Raj, India’s central bank governor, said in a recent televised interview.

Some 270m people — nearly 22pc of the population — live in poverty here, making giveaways particularly resonant for voters. Last July, the Indian Supreme Court ruled the giveaways were not technically corrupt, but “distribution of freebies of any kind, undoubtedly, influences all people. It shakes the root of free and fair elections to a large degree’’.

But many voters welcome the giveaways as the cost of living skyrockets. ‘’It is a good gesture!” said Soymyajit Singh, a 20-year-old university student who got a free laptop in October under a programme organised by Akhilesh Yadav, chief minister of northern Uttar Pradesh state. “Everyone needs a computer. But how many of us can afford it?’’

The laptop swayed Singh’s vote. While his family staunchly supports the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Singh says he will cast his ballot for Yadav’s Samajwadi Party.

In Tamil Nadu, Jayalalitha defended her giveaways by saying they were welfare measures aimed at improving poor people’s standard of living.

Jayalalitha is among the politicians who have hopes of becoming prime minister this year. If no one party dominates elections, regional parties such as hers will play a key role in cobbling together a coalition government in New Delhi.

Sanjay Nirupam, a Congress leader in western Maharashtra state, launched a hunger strike and threatened to set himself on fire to press his demands for government subsidies that would lower electricity bills in Mumbai by 20pc. He called off his hunger strike after four days after the party leader in his state assured him the plan would come under serious consideration.

In New Delhi, the Aam Aadmi Party, or Common Man Party, cut electricity bills in half this year for poorer households.

The BJP promised grain at cheaper rates for the poor in central Chhattisgarh state, where the party has been in power for years. The party leader, Narendra Modi, is considered a top candidate for prime minister in the upcoming national vote.

Nationally, the Congress party pushed for an $805m plan that allows families to buy more subsidised cooking gas cylinders. The government approved the expanded subsidy following demands by Rahul Gandhi, the likely Congress candidate for prime minister.

Analysts say the giveaways may be a time-honoured practice, but the government is hard pressed to pay for them.

At the end of September 2013, India’s long-term external debt was $305.5bn. India will have to pay back a short-term debt of $172bn by March 31, according to government statistics.

In New Delhi, though Aam Aadmi is lowering the electricity bills of poor households, it is not making up the difference. Private distribution companies have told Arvind Kejriwal’s government that they are running out of money to pay generation companies.

The Business Standard newspaper reported that the companies are already sitting on losses worth Rs110bn ($1.7 billion). The suppliers have warned residents to be prepared for eight to 10 hours of daily power cuts in parts of the city if the new government doesn’t raise electricity rates and lend them money to buy power from state-run utilities.

Even when the government is offering freebies, as the Congress party is now, that doesn’t guarantee votes. The party’s stock is low, battered by corruption scandals and inability to unblock bottlenecks in crucial sectors like land, power and food. ‘

“What helped the Congress party in the last election in 2009 was a reasonable economic growth,” economist Surjit Bhalla said. “What will hurt them the most in the next elections is a lack of growth in the past five years.”—AP