The bill is here. It’s sitting on the table, cold and unavoidable, and Basant Kumar Patil just pointed at it with the clinical detachment of a debt collector.

Patil, the economic adviser to Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah, recently decided to stop whispering the quiet part and started shouting it. His message to the public ahead of the state budget was simple: if you want the shiny stuff—the roads, the bridges, the "development" promised in glossy brochures—you’re going to have to bleed for it. Specifically, prices will rise. Taxes will climb. The era of the free lunch is officially moving into the "subscription fee" phase.

It’s a refreshingly honest gut-punch. For months, the Karnataka government has been performing a high-wire act, trying to balance its "Five Guarantees" with the reality of a treasury that isn't exactly overflowing. Those guarantees—free electricity, grain, and bus rides—weren't gifts. They were a leveraged buyout of the electorate. Now, the interest is due.

Patil’s logic is a grim piece of arithmetic. You can’t pour billions into welfare and expect the infrastructure to build itself out of sheer goodwill. The state is looking at a roughly ₹52,000 crore hole punched into its budget by these populist schemes. That’s a lot of zeros. To plug it, the government is looking at the usual suspects: fuel, liquor, and stamp duties.

We’ve already seen the opening act. A hike in sales tax on petrol and diesel earlier this year added about ₹3 to the cost of a liter. Milk prices ticked up by ₹2. There’s chatter about water tariffs in Bengaluru—a city where the "development" often involves tankers because the pipes are bone-dry—rising for the first time in a decade. It’s a classic bait-and-switch, though the government prefers to call it "resource mobilization."

The friction here isn't just about the money. It’s about the trade-off. In the tech-heavy corridors of Bengaluru, where the roads look like they’ve been hit by mortar fire and the commute times are a global punchline, the "prices will rise" mantra feels like a cruel joke. The residents are being asked to pay more for the privilege of sitting in the same traffic, while the revenue they generate is funneled into keeping the lights on in rural households for free. It’s a redistribution of pain.

Politicians usually spend their time telling us we can have it all. We can have the high-speed rail and the free power. We can have the global tech hub and the massive social safety net. Patil is dropping that facade. He’s telling the public that the state is a business with a failing revenue model.

But here’s the cynical truth: "Development" in this context is a vague, slippery term. It’s the carrot dangled to justify the stick. When the government says prices must rise for development, they rarely specify which development they mean. Is it the development of a functioning drainage system that doesn't turn the city into a lake every time it drizzles? Or is it the development of enough political capital to survive the next election cycle?

The middle class is the designated shock absorber for these experiments. They’re the ones who don't qualify for the freebies but are expected to fund them through every trip to the gas station and every bottle of Kingfisher. It’s a pay-to-play system where the "play" part is increasingly optional.

Patil’s admission marks the end of the honeymoon. The "Guarantees" were the user-acquisition phase of the government’s strategy. Now that the "users" are locked in, it’s time to monetize. It’s a pivot we’ve seen a thousand times in Silicon Valley, usually right before a platform starts to fall apart.

The government is betting that people will grumble, pay the extra three rupees at the pump, and move on. They’re betting that the promise of "future development" is enough of a sedative to mask the immediate sting of a lighter wallet. It’s a bold gamble in a state that doesn't exactly have a stellar track record of delivering on its construction deadlines.

So, the math is settled. The government needs cash, and you’re the only source they have left. They’ve stopped pretending that welfare is a miracle of efficiency. It’s a transaction. You got your "free" stuff, and now the invoice has been adjusted for inflation.

One has to wonder: if we’re paying premium prices now, when do we get to talk to the manager about the service?