Stating how Congress’ anti-poverty programme ‘Nyay’ (Nyuntam Aay Yojana) has disarrayed the PM Modi-led government at centre, Congress President Rahul Gandhi on Thursday said that 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.
“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,” Gandhi said in an exclusive interview with PTI.
Gandhi also said, “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.”
“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 was quoted saying.
The Congress President also termed the ‘Nyay’ scheme a “game changer” and a “final assault” on poverty. He said that the scheme is “fiscally perfectly doable and will not be implemented “rashly like demonetisation and GST of the BJP”.
When asked about the apprehensions of some economists that ‘Nyay’, which entails an expenditure of Rs 3.6 lakh crore annually, could aggravate India’s fiscal deficit position, Gandhi declined the claims saying that his 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.
