Cues for India in Pak subsidy schemes

Pakistan plans to introduce two initiatives: a card scheme to provide direct subsidy to the poor, and lower fuel price for two-wheelers and small cars, reports Chetan Chauhan.

Updated on: Jun 24, 2008, 23:14:03 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Prosperous India may have some lessons to learn from its neighbour on how to cushion the poor from rising inflation and high fuel prices. Pakistan plans to introduce two initiatives: a card scheme to provide direct subsidy to the poor, and lower fuel price for two-wheelers and small cars.

The Benazir Income Support Card will enable poor people to get a cash grant of Rs 1,000 every month, apart from medical insurance, subsidised food and training for employment, Dr Salman Faruqui, deputy chairperson of Pakistan's planning commission, said after meeting his counterpart Montek Singh Ahluwalia on Tuesday.

At a time when inflation has risen to 12 per cent in Pakistan, the scheme will help the poor sustain themselves. “The scheme has been devised to combat the food crisis and fuel price rise,” Faruqui said. The scheme - which aims to cover 5-7 million people, about 20 per cent of the country's population – has caught the interest of Ahluwalia, who wanted to know its impact on poverty alleviation.

The other proposal is to have lower fuel prices for two-wheelers and smaller cars, up to 800 cc engine capacity, and market price for bigger vehicles.

“We are heavily subsiding the oil sector and as a result of it well-off people are also benefitting. I find a similar situation exists in India as well,” said Faruqui. Indian planning officials, however, find this a more different scheme to implement.

Speaking about the Iran-Pakistan-India pipeline, Faruqui expressed confidence that India would join the agreement.

“From all the indications that we have, India will be joining with us. This pipeline is good for both India and Pakistan,” he said. Faruqui also believes that India and Pakistan should join hands to ask the oil producing countries to check rising international fuel prices.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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