New Delhi: Congress President Rahul Gandhi said Thursday the ‘Nyuntam Aay Yojana’ (Nyay) scheme will remonetise what Prime Minister Narendra Modi demonetised and asserted that his party’s anti-poverty programme has thrown the BJP into total disarray
In an exclusive interview to this agency ahead of the 17th general elections beginning April 11, Gandhi said the ‘Nyay’ scheme has the twin objectives of giving money to the 20 per cent poorest families in India and remonetising the economy ‘damaged’ by demonetisation.
“What the PM has done over the past five years is to remove all money from the economy with failed policies like demonetisation and a poorly executed Gabbar Singh Tax (GST). Informal sectors have been badly hit,” Rahul pointed out
“The aim of the ‘Nyay’ scheme is two-fold. First is to guarantee a minimum income to the bottom 20 per cent families. The second is to remonetise the economy that has been demonetised by Modiji,” Rahul added.
The Congress chief said there is a reason why the party christened the scheme ‘Nyay’, which means justice in English.
“There is another aspect to calling the scheme ‘Nyay’. Why have we chosen to call this scheme ‘Justice’? Because over the last five years, Mr Narendra Modi has simply snatched from poor and given nothing back. He has taken away from the farmers, he has snatched from the small and medium businesses, he’s taken away from the unemployed youth, he has extinguished the savings of mothers and sisters of this country. We want to return to India’s deprived sections what Modiji has snatched from them,” asserted the Congress president.
Terming ‘Nyay’ a ‘game changer’ and a ‘final assault’ on poverty, Rahul said the scheme is ‘fiscally perfectly doable’ and will not be implemented ‘rashly like demonetisation and GST of the BJP’.
Asked about apprehensions of some economists that ‘Nyay’, which entails an expenditure of Rs 3.6 lakh crore annually, could aggravate India’s fiscal deficit position, Rahul said, “No, that’s not right.” He informed the party consulted a large number of economists and experts, studied numerous papers and other research material on this subject and run an extensive financial modelling exercise before deciding to include the plan in its Lok Sabha manifesto.
To a question on the scheme being prima facie populist, Rahul said that it is not a populist measure as projected by some critics. “If giving out Rs 3.5 lakh crore to 15 people by Narendra Modi is not considered populist, why should this be as it is aimed at benefitting the poor,” Rahul pointed out.
The Congress president however did not give a time line on when the party planned to make India poverty free and said ‘Nyay’ will first be tested through a pilot to ‘smoothen out any flaws’.
PTI
