All posts tagged: 2023 Rajasthan Assembly elections

Rajasthan | Gehlot’s lessons in profligacy

Published by Webster

Thousands of crores have been spent on cosmetic touches in Rajasthan’s Kota. A chic new riverfront is the latest addition to that frenzied beautification, though it has landed in a controversy over allegedly flouting environmental norms. Amid criticism, Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot decided to distance himself from the inauguration. But can he justify the wanton spending on other projects? BILL OF DEVELOPMENT: The beautified Chambal riverfront in Kota ISSUE DATE: Sep 25, 2023 | UPDATED: Sep 15, 2023 17:38 IST A helical clover bridge sounds like a sleek thing right out of some First World xanadu. This one, built at a cost of Rs 42 crore, is in Rajasthan’s Kota, but it soars and twists balletically too, for about a kilometre, except that it lands a few metres from where it started. Even more mystifyingly, it soars over nothing: there’s no crossing or rail track or any form of obstruction underneath. Just a few minutes away, along the Chambal, a new riverfront was inaugurated with great pomp on September 12—a costly façade laid end-to-end over …

Poll-bound Rajasthan | Welfare state

Published by Webster

Amidst a pre-election frenzy of welfare schemes and freebies, the Gehlot regime also enacts a couple of first-in-India bills FOURTH TERM IN MIND: CM Ashok Gehlot distributing social security pension in Sikar. ISSUE DATE: Aug 21, 2023 | UPDATED: Aug 11, 2023 16:13 IST Ascribe it to a genuine feel for the people or to plain shrewdness, but Ashok Gehlot has made social welfare a consistent focus of his administration. A special urgency to tend to the general weal seems to grip the Rajasthan chief minister especially before elections—a time such as now. Whether born of principle or exigency, this bent continues to give Rajasthan some pioneering policy moments. Back in 2011, during his second term, the Free Medicine Scheme was one such. More than an unthinking handout, it was an intervention that answered to a historical need, at a time when increasingly privatised healthcare was bleeding the mass of immiserated citizenry. Crafted around the procurement of generic medicines, it helped break the tyranny of huge mark-ups on branded drugs. Now, the budget session of …