NYAY: Experts see issues in Rahul Gandhi’s poverty-alleviation scheme 

Jean Dreze.

New Delhi: The minimum income guarantee scheme or Nyuntam Aay Yojana (NYAY), which was was announced by the Congress president, Rahul Gandhi, on Tuesday, has raised serious concerns regarding its implementation and generation of resources.  However, Gandhi has claimed that the Congress party had consulted several economists and experts before announcing the minimum income plan for the poor. 

Gandhi, on Tuesday, said, “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.”

This comes after the Union finance minister, Arun Jaitley, called the Congress’s poverty-alleviation scheme as “bluff”.

According to experts, although the scheme shows commitment to social security, implementation of such scheme would be a tough job.

Jean Dreze, who is a development economist and activist, while talking to PTI, said, “NYAY reflects a welcome commitment to social security. The soundness of this proposal, however, depends on how it is to be finances and how the poorest 20 per cent are to be identified. Hopefully, the proposal will improve even as the commitment remains.”

Ila Patnaik, former principal economic advisor to the government, told Business Standard that the Congress should make it clear how it would implement the scheme.

Syeda Hameed, who was a member of the erstwhile Planning Commission, and Abhijit Sen, a retired Jawaharlal Nehru University professor, while talking to the media, said the scheme will be a big fiscal burden on the country as the proposal is going to cost a lot of money.

Under the Nyay scheme, any family with a monthly income less that ₹12,000 is eligible to receive ₹6,000 per month. The scheme is going to cost ₹3.60 lakh crore annually that is estimated around 1.7 per cent of gross domestic product.

The Congress party is yet to clarify the generation of resources to implement the scheme.

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