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Rahul takes a dig at PM on additional NREGS outlay
New Delhi: Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Monday took a dig at Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s “U-turn” on the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee
New Delhi: Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Monday took a dig at Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s “U-turn” on the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) citing his initial opposition to it and thanked him for allocating an additional Rs 40,000 crore for the flagship programme on Sunday.
He tweeted a video clip of Modi’s speech in Parliament in 2015 in which the Prime Minister called the scheme an example of the Congress’s failures. “Do you think I will disband the scheme? My political wisdom does not allow me to do it. This is a living monument of your [Congress] failures to tackle poverty in 60 years,” Modi had said about MGNREGS in the speech and added the Congress had to send people to “dig up ditches and pay them” even after 60 years of the independence.
The Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government introduced the scheme in 2005 to provide 100 days of unskilled manual work annually to at least one member of every rural household.
The additional allocation has come as the demand for work has surged as millions of migrant workers, left jobless by the Covid-19 lockdown imposed in late March, have returned to their homes from big cities.
“The Prime Minister has approved an additional budget of Rs 40,000 crore for MNREGA scheme created during the UPA era. We express our gratitude to him for understanding the vision of MNREGA and promoting it.”
Former Union finance minister P Chidambaram separately called the Centre’s Covid-19 economic package “hopelessly inadequate” and said it has “left high and dry” several sections, including 130 million families at the bottom half of the population, migrant workers and farmers.
“We express our thorough disappointment and request the government to reconsider the stimulus package and announce a revised and comprehensive fiscal stimulus package of not less than Rs 10 lakh crore of real additional expenditure equivalent to 10% of the GDP,” he said.
He said the package only amounts to Rs 1,86,650 crore, which is barely 0.91% of the GDP. Chidambaram added already budgeted expenditure, regulatory measures, and proposed reforms have been also included in the package.
He called the package inadequate given the gravity of the economic crisis. “Most analysts, rating agencies and banks have placed the size of the fiscal stimulus at between 0.8 to 1.5% [of the GDP].”
Modi announced the package last week to help individuals and businesses deal with the Covid-19 pandemic and the lockdown enforced to combat its spread.
Union finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman has announced details of the package, which the government has said is equivalent of a little below 10% of the GDP.
Chidambaram said Sitharaman has acknowledged that additional expenditure must be financed by additional borrowing. He said the true value of the fiscal stimulus package “will, therefore, be known when we know what is the additional borrowing in 2020-21 to finance the additional expenditure over and above the expenditure budget of Rs 30,42,230 crore. The truth cannot be hidden for long”.
Gopal Agarwal : “The details about the total stimulus given by FM in her press briefing yesterday was about Rs 20 lakh and 90 thousand crores.The spin master wants it to restrict it to some portions only. The total package includes monetary stimulus by RBI and Pradhan mantri garib kalyan yojna, announced earlier and reform package also. The size of total package being 10 % of GDP is well comparable globally with regard to size and content and is much above most of them. This will also kick start Indian economy and bring happiness to all of us, as it has something for everyone.”
