Promises To Keep

Releasing the Congress manifesto at the party headquarters on April 2, former finance minister P. Chidambaram, who led the committee that prepared the document, promised that should the party form the next government, it will “deliver wealth and welfare”.

- Kaushik Deka

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) dismissed the manifesto as unworkable. But given Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s own reputation for indulging in poll hyperbole, it does seem a bit rich that the Congress stands accused of making promises it can’t keep. The Congress’s big idea is NYAY (Nyuntam Aay Yojana), a guarantee that no household in the country will have an income of less than Rs 6,000 per calendar month. Some 50 million households will thus become eligible for cash transfers of about Rs 72,000 a year, at a cost to the exchequer of some Rs 3.6 lakh crore, which is about two per cent of India’s current GDP.

How the Congress intends to pay for it is not fully explained in the manifesto, though it must be said a manifesto is not the same thing as a budget. The Congress has also sketched out its road map, claiming it will take about a year, including the time required for the designing, testing and piloting of the scheme, before NYAY is rolled out and implemented in phases.