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So, what worked for the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM)-led INDIA grouping in the just concluded assembly election in Jharkhand? A trend emerges if one looks at the polls in the state in conjunction with those in Maharashtra (just concluded) and Haryana (in October) — pro-poor welfare policies are reshaping the form and content of democracy in the country. Due to the impact of these social welfare policies, a voter segment of beneficiaries (labharthi) has emerged that is choosing parties that launched/implemented such policies successfully, beyond caste and religious boundaries. Among these beneficiaries, women constitute a cohesive and organised sub-group, possibly given their resilience in the face of hardships in the everyday life of households. So, social welfare policies such as Ladli Behna Yojana in Madhya Pradesh, Mukhyamantri Majhi Ladki Bahin Yojana in Maharashtra, and Maiya Samman Yojana in Jharkhand, which provide monthly financial support to women, have paid rich dividends and mobilised women beneficiaries in favour of political parties that conceptualised, launched and implemented these. A factor behind the victory of the INDIA bloc in Jharkhand is undoubtedly the impact of this and the other popular social support schemes launched and implemented by the Hemant Soren government. Policies such as Savitribai Phule Kishori Samriddhi Yojana for young girls, Abua Awas Yojana, Birsa Harit Gram Yojana evolved a class of beneficiaries who likely voted for the JMM and its alliance partners in these elections. Democratic electoral politics is also about economics. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Viksit Bharat vision places significant importance on such schemes helping empower the poor who then evolve into a homogeneous beneficiary “caste”. This beneficiary “caste” will then tend to favour the political parties that disseminate benefits to the needy. Hemant Soren and the JMM also cultivated sympathy over the former’s imprisonment, projecting him as a victim of retributive politics. Slogans such as “jail ke badle vote” ( vote as the answer to jailing leaders) worked well in favour of the JMM and the INDIA grouping. Soren’s wife Kalpana Soren’s campaign in tribal areas strengthened the narrative of victimisation. Tribal communities constitute around 28% of the state’s population. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) tried hard to mobilise tribal voters through a narrative of pro-tribal governance policies and a focus on upholding and celebrating “tribal pride”. The party and its allies do have many tribal faces but, Hemant Soren retained the edge when it came to the trust of tribal communities — tribals have consistently remained the base vote for the JMM in certain parts of Jharkhand since a long time. Tribal identity politics remains strong in obvious and not-so-obvious ways. The poll results show that the JMM has a stronger connect with this identity, as asserted by the tribal communities in the state. The party’s emphasis on the implementation of a Sarna (a dominant tribal belief system in the state) Code intensified the identity assertion of many tribal communities. The BJP tried to stoke fears of “outsider” intrusion (through not-so-subtle claims of Bangladeshis and Rohingyas being allowed to settle in the state). The narrative failed to penetrate the tribal zones in the state. Another big factor in the polls was the INDIA bloc’s projection of a single chief ministerial face (Hemant Soren) versus the poorly veiled factionalism within the BJP (with widely discussed contenders being Arjun Munda, Babulal Marandi, Raghubar Das, and even Champai Soren, who joined the BJP from the JMM after a short stint as chief minister). The confusion over the leadership question in the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) cost it dearly. The JMM/INDIA grouping’s victory is the outcome of several strong factors, as discussed here (a strong victimisation narrative, social welfare schemes, and the politics of tribal selfhood). The last, of course, was potent to the extent it defeated the BJP’s competing narrative of tribal pride. And, as far as spinning welfare schemes as vote magnets is concerned, while the BJP has repeatedly played a strong hand by parading the reach and superior implementation of such schemes designed by the Centre, it was the local schemes that mattered more in this election when it came to establishing beneficiary connect and seeking votes. Therein lies the message for the political class and democracy at large. Badri Narayan is director, GB Pant Social Science Institute. The views expressed are personal

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The Trudeau government’s two-pronged announcement of a goods and services tax holiday on certain “essential” items and its pledge to dole out $250 to millions of people in the country have left economists scrambling to gauge the impact of Ottawa’s $6.3-billion, election-style splurge. With Canada’s economy facing several headwinds, the stimulus cheques and the on items such as groceries, children’s clothing, beer and Christmas trees are expected to spur consumers to open their wallets, boosting economic growth in the near term. However, the sugar high could fade quickly, as shoppers simply shift around the timing of their purchases. And the jolt of spending – coming on top of recent hotter-than-expected data – may help convince the Bank of Canada to slow its pace of interest-rate cuts. The new big-ticket spending proposals also raise questions about Ottawa’s ability to stay within its self-imposed deficit guardrails, especially if, as some economists think, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau decides to make the sales tax changes permanent as a way to placate angry voters. “Once politicians get the idea that, ‘Oh, playing with the GST, playing with things that are taxable or not,’ is a political winner, they’re never going to stop. And that is not good for the budget and it’s not good for tax policy,” said Stephen Gordon, an economics professor at Laval University. Coming in at around 0.2 per cent of gross domestic product, Ottawa’s will ripple through the economy – but it’s hardly a game-changer. The economics team at Bank of Montreal boosted its GDP growth estimate for the first quarter of 2025 to 2.5 per cent from 1.7 per cent, but trimmed its GDP growth forecast for the third quarter, when the effect of the stimulus fades. Avery Shenfeld, chief economist at Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, said that the tax rebates could theoretically increase GDP by as much as a quarter-percentage-point next year, especially because fiscal stimulus has a bigger impact when there is slack in the economy, as is currently the case. “But that’s only if these cheques are permitted to raise the federal deficit,” Mr. Shenfeld wrote in a client note. “If Ottawa is merely shifting funds from what it otherwise would have spent elsewhere, in order to stick to a given deficit target, the impact could be negated.” It’s also unclear how much the stimulus cheques will increase consumer spending, with people potentially pocketing the money or using it to pay down debt, rather than going shopping Mr. Shenfeld said the overall package would likely have a “very marginal” impact on upcoming Bank of Canada interest-rate decisions. This view was shared by other Bay Street economists, although there was a broad agreement that Ottawa’s stimulus essentially seals the deal for a quarter-point rate cut at the next Bank of Canada meeting in December, rather than another half-point cut, as happened in October. “On its own, this probably doesn’t move the needle so significantly because of the fact that it’s not massive and it is temporary,” said Taylor Schleich, director of economics and strategy at National Bank Financial. However, complicating that is the fact the measures come at the same time as stimulus is rolling out from other levels of government, inflation has picked up and housing markets are potentially reaccelerating, he said. “If the Bank of Canada was on the fence about cutting 25 or 50 basis points, perhaps all of this data taken together leads them more towards a more gradual easing approach in the near term,” he said. Governor Tiff Macklem said last month that the bank is less concerned than it was about government spending fuelling inflation and working at cross purposes to the bank’s still-restrictive monetary policy now that inflation is largely under control. “We’re no longer trying to get inflation down. Government spending is not pushing against us getting inflation down, we’ve got it down,” he told the Senate Banking Committee. It’s so far impossible to say how the two measures will impact the federal government’s bottom line, because Ottawa has yet to produce its final spending and revenue picture for the past fiscal year. However, in an , the Parliamentary Budget Officer, Canada’s budgetary watchdog, estimated the deficit for 2023-24 would come in at $46.8-billion, deeper than the $40-billion deficit laid out in the government’s 2024 budget. The government’s own fiscal guardrail aims to maintain the 2023-24 deficit at or below $40.1-billion. The stimulus cheques and GST changes will likely erode the government’s fiscal standing in the coming months, according to Derek Holt, head of capital markets economics at Bank of Nova Scotia, who speculated in a Friday note to clients that the planned two-month GST holiday “is very likely to turn permanent and blow through Ottawa’s finances.” In a separate report, Mr. Holt estimated if the GST changes were made permanent, along with the stimulus cheques, the changes would result in a $14-billion hit to federal finances in fiscal 2025-26 and $10-billion a year in subsequent years. Over a five-year horizon, if the GST changes remained permanent, “the cumulative deficit would balloon by about an extra $52-billion,” he wrote. Even if the changes remain temporary, tend to view these types of stimulus measures dimly, thinking of them as inefficient and poorly targeted. “If they wanted to beef up the income support at lower income levels then you either increase the GST rebates or the Canada Child Benefit, things like that. Just across the board $250 to everybody, that’s clearly electoral,” Prof. Gordon said. Luc Godbout, an economics professor at the Université de Sherbrooke, said the temporary nature of tax cuts will cause consumers to shift the timing of their consumption and complicate things for retailers. And higher-income individuals may also benefit disproportionately from the GST break on things such as restaurant meals. “These are not measures that were thought out from an economic perspective, but from a political perspective,” he said in an e-mail. Nor do the stimulus cheques or GST changes do anything to “impact our long-term growth trajectory or close the competitive gap we have with the U.S.” when it comes to attracting business investment, said Kevin Milligan, a professor of economics at the Vancouver School of Economics at the University of British Columbia. “When you’re in a world of being in deficit and there’s not a macroeconomic need for it, I don’t see these as economically defensible measures,” he said.Stock market today: Wall Street wavers at the start of a holiday-shortened week

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Revvity Inc. stock outperforms competitors despite losses on the dayA weekend anchor for left-leaning cable channel MSNBC said he was “conflicted” by President-elect Donald Trump’s decision to name the openly gay hedge fund manager Scott Bessent as the next Treasury Secretary. Jonathan Capehart, a Washington Post opinion writer who moonlights as host of “The Sunday Show with Jonathan Capehart” on the Comcast-owned news channel, admitted he was torn about Bessent’s nomination because it was a Republican who chose him to be the highest-ranking gay official ever. “Wait, Scott Bessent is gay, and married, and has children,” Capehart, who is also gay, said during Sunday’s broadcast. His comments were posted in a clip on X. “You know if confirmed, he would be the highest ranking out LGBT person ever to serve — to be appointed and confirmed by the United States Senate,” he added. “And I’m kind of conflicted about this.” Jon Reinish, a Democratic strategist who was a guest on Capehart’s panel, said: “In that case, credit where it’s due...” Reinish correctly predicted that the stock market would “shoot up” once they opened in reaction to the news of Bessent’s nomination, adding: “Wall Street likes the guy.” “It is very interesting, yes, that is Trump and not one of our team that made that historic nomination,” Reinish said. Capehart, who once shed tears on the air while discussing the events at the US Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, is the latest name on a roster of MSNBC stars who have struggled to cope with Trump’s crushing victory over Vice President Kamala Harris in the Nov. 5 presidential election. “Morning Joe” co-hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski traveled to Mar-a-Lago to meet with Trump in person despite telling their viewers that the Republican was a “fascist” who posed a danger to the republic. Brzezinski last week announced that she was leaving X , the social media platform owned by prominent Trump backer Elon Musk, in favor of Bluesky, which has seen an influx of left-leaning internet users who have fled the platform formerly known as Twitter. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rallied more than 300 points on Monday and the S&P 500 hit a new all-time high as investors cheered Bessent’s nomination. At its peak, the Dow was up more than 500 points before paring back gains. Bessent, the founder of Key Square Group, rose to become money manager for billionaire financier George Soros. “I am most pleased to nominate Scott Bessent to serve as the 79th Secretary of the Treasury of the United States,” Trump wrote in his announcement, posted on Truth Social . “Scott is widely respected as one of the World’s foremost International Investors and Geopolitical and Economic Strategists,” the president-elect said of this Treasury pick. Bessent, the 62-year-old founder of Key Square Group, has repeatedly backed the president-elect’s pro-tariff stance in a series of op-eds and media appearances over the past year. “Scott’s story is that of the American Dream,” Trump said Friday, noting that Bessent “has long been a strong advocate of the America First Agenda.” The nomination of Bessent ended a bitter, behind-the-scenes race that saw fierce jockeying among Wall Street power players including Cantor Fitzgerald CEO Howard Lutnick and Apollo Global Management chief Marc Rowan. Lutnick, who co-chairs the Trump transition team and was thought to be the front-runner for the Treasury Secretary job, was named Commerce Secretary.