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Lok Sabha elections 2019: Congress makes new Nyay pitch to women voters
Congress president Rahul Gandhi on Monday promised that 20% of the poorest families in the country will be given Rs 72,000 each annually if his party came to power in this summer’s Lok Sabha elections.
The Congress on Tuesday strongly linked its promised Nyunatam Aay Yojana (Nyay) minimum income guarantee scheme to women’s empowerment, saying the money will go directly into the bank accounts of female members of about 50 million of India’s poorest families, even as the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) questioned the principal Opposition party’s record of fighting poverty.
Congress president Rahul Gandhi on Monday promised that 20% of the poorest families in the country will be given Rs 72,000 each annually if his party came to power in this summer’s Lok Sabha elections.
Addressing a rally in Rajasthan on Tuesday, he termed the Congress’s promise a “surgical strike on poverty”.
“It’s a big bang… This is the Congress’s surgical strike on poverty. They [the BJP] worked to eliminate the poor, we will eliminate poverty,” Gandhi said.
“Nobody should be poor in the country in the 21st century,” Gandhi said.
Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra said the move will empower women within families. “So happy that under the NYAY scheme, women will be the ones who receive the annual amount of Rs 72,000 directly into their accounts. Empower a woman, empower a family,” she tweeted.
While it is unclear what constitutes the “woman’s vote”, analysts who have studied voting behaviours have found that more women cited inflation and price rise than men as factors that influenced their electoral choices. Studies have also found that women tend to vote on issues such as health and availability of water and food over roads and infrastructure.
The remarks by the top Congress leaders came hours after the BJP accused the party of “misleading the people” of the country. “Classic Congress style volte-face within 24 hours. They are misleading the people of this country,” the BJP tweeted.
It also posted a video of Congress spokesperson Randeep Surjewala clarifying that the minimum income guarantee promise was “not a top-up scheme”. In the same tweet, the BJP posted a video of Gandhi, who can be heard saying the Congress planned to “top-up” the pay of those below the minimum income line.
Union minister and BJP spokesperson Nirmala Sitharam also criticised the Congress over its election promise, saying the party was still relying on the “garibi hatao” slogan coined by former prime minister Indira Gandhi in 1971, as it could not drive away poverty during its rule.
Addressing a news conference in the national capital, Congress’s chief spokesperson Surjewala asked Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the BJP to spell out whether they supported the minimum income guarantee scheme.
He said Nyay was not a “top-up scheme” and alleged that it was “shameful that the pro-rich” Modi was opposing the world’s biggest anti-poverty scheme.
“Every poor family shall be rightfully entitled to Rs 72,000 per annum. This will apply to both urban and rural poor families… Rs 72,000 would be deposited directly in the bank accounts of the woman of the family. So, it is a women-centric scheme.”
As the political battle played out on Tuesday, former Reserve Bank of India governor Raghuram Rajan led a debate on the impact of the Congress’s promise on fiscal prudence, saying that while the scheme could “revolutionise things”, it was the details that mattered.
“The government that comes needs to see what the fiscal space looks like. As of now, it is very tight. You cannot add scheme upon scheme. A view should be taken post elections within the fiscal space available,” Rajan told India Today in an interview.
At a rally in Jaipur, Gandhi said the minimum income scheme was discussed with economists, including Rajan. “We consulted all big economists, without telling anyone, without giving any speech. We were engaged in this work for six months. Take the list of all big economists of the world, we consulted them...Raghuram Rajan... one by one,” he said.
The income guarantee plan fits with Gandhi’s campaign pitch that targets Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the ruling National Democratic Alliance (NDA), accusing them of working for the rich. The Congress asked its state chiefs to hold press conferences on Nyay over the coming days and announced a competition in which people will send in possible logos for the scheme.
The scheme is widely seen as a version of universal basic income (UBI), a concept that entitles families to a certain threshold sum of money regardless of whether they work or not.
The BJP’s election campaign over the past one month has focussed on issues of national security, with the Prime Minister and other senior leaders raising the pitch following an Indian Air Force strike on a terrorist camp in Pakistan’s Balakot. The February 26 air strike was carried out after a suicide bombing, which killed 40 troopers of the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF), was claimed by Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammed.
The Congress president has stressed the need to keep the focus on unemployment, agrarian distress, unsuccessful implementation of the goods and services tax (GST), bank scams and other corruption allegations against the BJP leaders.
In a series of tweets on Tuesday, former finance minister and Congress leader P Chidambaram said: “Happy that Congress President announced NYAY. Under NYAY, the poorest 20 per cent of families will get a uniform amount of Rs 72,000 year. In other words, every family in the poorest 20 per cent will be given an income support of Rs 6,000 a month. We have consulted economists, this is doable, and we will adhere to fiscal discipline.”
But Niti Aayog vice chairman Rajiv Kumar said the scheme will burst fiscal discipline. Kumar tweeted that the cost of the minimum income guarantee scheme at 2% of the GDP and 13% of the budget will ensure that real needs of people remain unsatisfied.
Slamming Kumar for criticising the move, Surjewala called the Niti Aayog “Rajneeti Ayog” and asked him to run the organisation from the BJP office and contest the elections instead. “Because Modi ji opposes anything and everything that is pro-poor, People will now do ‘Nyay’ (justice),” Surjewala said.
