New Delhi: Congress President Rahul Gandhi on Monday declared “final assault on poverty” by promising a minimum income of Rs 6,000 per month to India’s poorest families, if the party comes to power. The money will be directly transferred to the bank accounts of the poorest families and help lift 25 crore people out of poverty.
Under the scheme, any family earning less than Rs. 12,000 pm will receive Rs. 6,000 every month in its bank account. The Congress party president described it as a ground breaking idea which had never been tried anywhere in the world and had crystallised after consulting the best economists worldwide.
Refusing to answer any other questions, Rahul said the contours of the scheme would be fleshed out by P Chidambaram and the head of the party manifesto. However, he insisted that the scheme is fiscally possible and the party has done all the calculations and talked with the best economists about it.
‘‘We have been studying the scheme for four-five months,” Rahul Gandhi said, describing it as an “extremely powerful, dynamic, well-thought-through idea.”Couching the proposal in generalities, Gandhi said he would not allow Prime Minister Modi to create two India(s), one for the rich and another for the poor. Like one Tricolour, there will be one India for all, he said.
After the big announcement, he asked the media, “Haan, surprise hue na? (So, you look surprised)”. The proposed cash hand out is modelled loosely on the concept of Universal Basic Income. UBI means people get a flat lump sum from the State instead of subsidies and social security payments.
“If Modi can give money to the richest, why not to the poorest?” reasoned the Congress chief. In reply to a flood of questions, Rahul said the scheme is not intended to provide subsidy to people who don’t do any work. The beneficiaries will be all working and would not stop working as under the scheme they will get the difference between their current income and Rs 12,000 per month. And, once their income rises to Rs 12,000, the benefit will cease.
The idea of guaranteed minimum income had come first from 1976 Nobel Prize winner economist Milton Friedman in his book “Capitalism and Freedom.” Asked if this were not a subsidy and a sort of bribe to secure the votes of the poor, he shot back that the Modi government had waived off Rs 3.5 lakh crore dues of the rich.
Was it not a subsidy to the rich? If Modi can give so much money to the rich, why not help the poor to live with dignity, he asked. Chhal-kapat and bluff: Jaitley: Finance Minister Arun Jaitley has rubbished the Congress scheme, calling it chhal-kapat (deceit) and bluff. “Congress has historically believed in political transactions in the name of removing poverty,” he said.
The Union Finance Minister also claimed that the Narendra Modi government was already giving 1.5 times the amount promised by Gandhi to the country’s poor. “We are already giving Rs. 75,000 crore in fertiliser subsidy and spending Rs. 20,000 crore on health.
About 70-80 per cent of this is done through direct bank transfer, and the rest can be given the same way,” he explained. Besides this, more than Rs. 1.8 lakh crore are being transferred to the accounts of India’s poor as well as its farming community, he added.