EPS Says 450 Units Free for Weavers The Brutal Math Shows It’ll Swallow Tamil Nadu Alive
Edappadi K. Palaniswami just stepped up and dropped what he thinks is a vote-winner for AIADMK.Handloom weavers? Your free electricity jumps from 300 units to 450 units a month. Power loom weavers? From 1,000 to 1,400 units. And every small trader running a pavement shop in urban areas? All their cooperative bank loans were completely waived. Sounds generous. Feels like classic tamil Nadu freebie politics on steroids. Until you run the numbers.
Just the 450-unit free power scheme alone costs as much as 10–15 major government schemes combined. At ₹7–8 per unit subsidy, one household gets roughly 5,400 units a year — that’s ₹40,500 in free power every single year. Now stretch that same freebie logic to 2 crore households, and you’re staring at a mind-blowing ₹81,000 crore annual bill.
Tamil Nadu’s total budget? Around ₹3.6–3.8 lakh crore. This one announcement alone is almost 25% of the entire state budget. Twenty-five percent.TANGEDCO is already drowning in losses. This will explode the subsidy backlog, balloon the DISCOM’s debt, and leave the state with only two choices later: borrow even more or hit everyone with massive tariff hikes when the election dust settles.
This isn’t governance. This is fiscal suicide dressed up as welfare. One leader’s big promise today becomes every Tamilian’s painful bill tomorrow. Welcome to election season in tamil Nadu — where the power is free, but the hangover is going to be brutal.