Rahul’s NYAY Promises To Be Knockout Punch

The Rs 3.6 lakh crore Nyuntam Aya Yojana (NYAY) is a virtual knock-out punch that Rahul Gandhi and the Congress have delivered on Modi and the BJP. The pro-poor minimum income guarantee scheme has changed the entire narrative of the election, at least for now.

Rahul Gandhi has gone ahead and declared in one of his rallies that NYAY was the Congress’s surgical strike on poverty. He underlined that surgical strike on poverty in India was as important as surgical strike on terrorists beyond our borders, as being tom-tommed by the BJP.

The BJP will now have to come up with a counter because a dole of Rs 72,000 annually to 20 per cent of India’s population is something which takes the wind out of all previous sops announced by the BJP. In contrast, the Rs 6,000-a-year dole announced by the BJP, and that too to poor farmers, actually seems too little. Congress workers will naturally keep mentioning NYAY throughout the election campaign and show it up in contrast to what the BJP is offering.

Without doubt, NYAY has the potential to become the key plank for the Congress, which can really reverberate with the poverty-stricken urban and rural poor. Naturally, do you vote for someone who promises Rs 6,000 or Rs 72,000?

It will also give an opportunity to the Congress to bring back the poll narrative from issue of security to poverty or economic issues and point out what the incumbent BJP government has done for the poor people of the country, already attacking the BJP for being pro-rich.

The idea is clearly to put the BJP on the defensive and force it to show its report card on farmer’s distress, unemployment and poverty alleviation. These are the areas in which, the Congress is well aware, the BJP can be shown to be on a weaker wicket.

If the Congress can demonstrate the do-ability of the NYAY scheme and its own sincerity in implementing a massive scheme of this nature to the electorate, analysts feel they can emerge as a credible challenge to the BJP.

The BJP naturally has been quick to debunk the whole scheme as a “bluff”, that it cannot be delivered without scrapping other welfare measures.

The BJP wants to warn the electorate not to fall for the “dreams” being peddled by the Congress just to entice their votes. Where is the money going to come from, they are asking.

They are clearly forgetting Modi’s words on how black money held by Indians in off-shore banks could be brought back within 100 days of his assuming power and how it was enough to deposit Rs 15 lakh into bank accounts of all Indians.

Some BJP members are even saying that Opposition parties can promise you the moon because they don’t have to worry about delivery as they will never come to power.

But that might just be wishful thinking.

Not many days are left for the elections and until something major happens, the Minimum Income Guarantee will be debated, talked about, criticised and praised and is likely to remain in the public mind till the hustings. This can be a major worry for the BJP.

Whatever bravado the BJP shows, it has to think fast to come up with a major poll issue, because NYAY has the potential to overshadow the BJP’s narratives of national security and good governance.

The Congress has already punched holes in the BJP’s security plank, by pointing at the political advantage BJP is trying to take from an action where credit should go only to the defence services.

The BJP has a counter that any good work done during its term in office, even by the defence services, should rightfully belong to the incumbent government, but it has not been communicated properly.

What has particularly vitiated the whole scene is the crude display of posters of defence personnel with BJP politicians at street corner rallies. This is something which has gone against the grain of Indian national value because as a nation we have assiduously kept politics out of our defence services.

There have been instances of political parties taking credit for successes achieved by defence services, but today it has been brought down to a very low level.

The BJP’s problem is that it has not been able to talk about emotive issues like Ram Mandir, which touches a large part of its vote bank this time.

On corruption, too, the BJP, which used to point fingers at the Congress, has not come out unscathed, particularly with issues like Rafale, Nirav Modi, Vijay Mallya being raised constantly by the Opposition.

Again, the BJP is not interested in making development the main issue because then the Opposition puts it on the mat on subjects like jobs, farmers distress, demonetization and GST.

The amounts promised in NYAY by Rahul may never be delivered, like we never got the Rs 15 lakh that Modi hinted at, but as long as the electorate believes in them leaders will keep making such promises to benefit during elections.