India, Feb. 23 -- It was a different form of a political-electoral race. To woo women voters, the Tamil Nadu ruling regime announced a cash deposit of INR5,000 in the bank accounts of the beneficiaries, and promised to increase the "monthly assistance to INR2,000 in the next. regime." In effect, more cash if the ruling-DMK was voted to power in the forthcoming assembly elections. Nothing new about the trend.

As we have noted in several columns in these pages, welfare has graduated from freebies (free power, free water, free food) to straightforward cash in the beneficiaries' bank accounts. Several states, and the central regime did this in the recent past, and the pre-electoral pattern is unlikely to change in the future.

Most political...