Every election season in India produces an escalating contest of promises. Monthly cash transfers, free electricity, subsidised transport and a growing catalogue of welfare guarantees have become as central to campaigns as ideology or leadership. Yet once the ballots are counted, the arithmetic of governance invariably intrudes upon the poetry of politics.

Manifestos promise universality; budgets enforce selectivity. This recurring pattern is revealing. It is not merely about governments reneging on commitments. It reflects the uneasy balance between democratic competition and fiscal responsibility. Political parties must persuade voters that they can improve lives immediately. Governments, however, must operate within the constraints of tax revenues, debt obligations and statutory fiscal deficit limits. The result is that ambitious electoral pledges often emerge from the legislative process as narrower, more conditional programmes than those originally advertised. The phenomenon cuts across party lines.

Whether governed by the BJP, the Congress, regional parties or the Aam Aadmi Party, states have discovered that campaign generosity collides with the hard realities of public finance. Eligibility........

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