Rahul game changer: Rs 6,000 monthly income for poor

New Delhi: Leaning on welfare economics in a bid to return to power in Lok Sabha polls, the Congress on Monday announced its ambitious minimum income guarantee scheme. or Nyuntam Aay Yojana (Nyay), under which 20 per cent of the poorest families in India would be given an income support of Rs 6,000 per month or Rs 72,000 per annum, benefiting about five crore households, or about 25 crore family members.

The scheme would be a part of the Congress manifesto which will be released on April 2 here.

“The time for change has come,” said Congress president Rahul Gandhi as he announced the scheme after a meeting of the Congress Working Committee (CWC).

“The final assault on poverty has begun. We will wipe out poverty from the country,” he said, adding each family that earns less than '12,000 per month would be compensated with a maximum of up to '6,000 per month. The money would be transferred to the bank account of a woman family member.

Terming the scheme as “historic” even in the global context, Mr Gandhi said, “It has been worked out that a total of five crore families or 25 crore individuals will directly benefit from the scheme.”

“It is an extremely powerful, ground-breaking and well-thought through idea. We have consulted many economists on the scheme,” he said.

The Congress president also said that an expert committee would be formed for implementation of the programme if the party is voted to power.

He said that the scheme would be the final assault on poverty and a kind of part II of the UPA government’s flagship Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act or the Mgnrega.

Training his guns on Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Mr Gandhi said, “If PM Modi can give '350,000 crore to India’s richest, then we can do the same for India’s poorest.”

“Narendra Modi is creating two Indias in the country and we will not allow two Indias and will be only one India. There will be no two Indias,” he said.

Saying that the poor have suffered in the last five years, the Congress president said, “We are going to provide justice to them.”

Nyay is likely to entail an annual expenditure of '360,000 crore, which is six times the outlay for Mgnrega in 2018-19 — '55,000 crore. The bulk of money to be disbursed under Nyay would go to rural India which accounted for 16.87 crore households in 2011.

The Congress chief termed it a “historic day”, and tweeted, “5 crore of the poorest families in India, will receive '72,000 per year. #NyayForIndia is our dream and our pledge. The time for change has come.”

The contours of the scheme have been worked out by top economists and experts, led by former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and former finance minister P. Chidambaram, and all fiscal repercussions have been taken into consideration, he said.

The scheme was first announced by Mr Gandhi at a political rally last month and party general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra is understood to have given the name Nyay to it at the last CWC in Ahmedabad.

Asked about the resources for the ambitious scheme, Mr Gandhi said, “Remember that in Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan, I had promised that in 10 days farmers will be given a loan waiver. I am promising you today that justice will be done. First a pilot project will be run then scheme will run.”

Head of Congress’ data analytics department Pravin Chakrabarty, who has been a part of the core group along with Mr Chidambaram and head of research department Rajiv Gowda, told this newspaper that the figure of '12,000 per month as the benchmark had been arrived at following research into the income distribution data and socio-economic data which shows that poorest families earn somewhere between '5,000 to '6,000 per month.

He said that a group of economists, sociologists and policy experts worked on the concept over the last five months and arrived at the proposed scheme.

“We are offering the people of India a new social contract and this is very much doable,” he said.

Mr Chakravarty said that the implementation model of the Nyay would be a federal one just like the Mgnrega and the Centre and states would share equal burden.

According to him, the minimum income guarantee programme was also an effort to remonetise the economy which had suffered massively following demonetisation. “As more money would be pumped in, the buying power of people would increase and the economy would kick-start again”.

Mr Chakravarthy said that the first phase of the scheme which would target the bottom 20 per cent of the poor would be implemented in two years.

Sources said the minimum income guarantee scheme proposed by the Congress after Monday’s CWC meet is not the first time the party has mulled over it.

Way back in 1938 when Subhash Chandra Bose was the party president, the AICC session in Haripura, Gujarat had discussed it and a separate committee to work out the contours had been formed under the leadership of none other than Late Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru. However, the rough and tumble of the Quit India Movement and later political happenings saw the matter getting buried.

A good 80 years later though Mr Nehru’s great grandson has now proposed one of the most ambitious welfare programmes of the world, they said.