Maximum gambit (The Hindu)

Mains Paper 3: Economy
Prelims level: Nyuntam Aay Yojana
Mains level: Income transfer scheme

Context

•  The Congress party’s promise of transferring Rs. 6,000 a month to poor households as just a pre-poll gimmick by an Opposition party seeking to be one up on the ruling regime’s minimal cash transfer scheme in the form of PM-KISAN.

•  The party has not fully spelt out the details of its minimum income guarantee scheme, Nyuntam Aay Yojana (NYAY), and has limited itself to saying this would be a flat transfer of Rs. 6,000 a month to identified poor households.

•  There has been little word on how the Congress expects to finance NYAY.

•  A ballpark estimate of the fiscal expenditure, to transfer Rs. 72,000 every year to the poorest 20% of the approximately 25 crore Indian households, would be Rs. 3.6 lakh crore.

NYAY impacts on Union Budget

•  This is twice the estimated amount set aside for food subsidy and five times that for fertilizer subsidy in the 2019-20 Union Budget.
•  It is not clear whether the Congress, should it come to power, will cut back on other subsidies and programmes in order to finance NYAY.
•  There is also the additional problem of the identification of the poor the Socio-Economic and Caste Census of 2011 is the most comprehensive exercise for this, but it has been riven by reliability and authenticity issues and has only been partially released to the public as yet.
•  By having an inbuilt provision of targeting the beneficiaries, NYAY can fall short as other programmes have, such as the targeted public distribution system.

More clarification needed

•  The devil in the detail and the financing of the scheme apart, the idea behind NYAY is not entirely unsound.
•  An unconditional transfer of a specified minimum income support to the poor will go a long way in helping address immediate needs related to health, education and indebtedness.
•  A large section of the targeted poor would include landless workers and marginal farmers in rural areas, and unemployed youth in families engaged in menial labour in urban areas.
•  Besides shoring up income to meet such basic needs and pushing wages upwards, the transfer scheme can help spur demand and consumption in rural areas in particular.

Way forward

•  There are disincentives inherent in the scheme as well.
•  A section of the beneficiaries could withdraw themselves from employment but this could be mitigated by the expected overall spur in demand in the economy through consumption, and by the rise in real wages consequent to the shrinking of the labour market.
•  Limited cash transfers in the form of direct farm income support in States such as Telangana and Odisha have helped ameliorate agrarian crises.
•  However, has no precedent, it might give a fillip to the Congress election campaign, but much more homework is required for its implementation.
•  A dole is not a magic bullet; it can only be one among a clutch of robust and prudent welfare policies.

Online Coaching for UPSC PRE Exam

General Studies Pre. Cum Mains Study Materials

Prelims Questions:

Q1. Which of these is not a characteristic of RPA software?
a) It is Business user friendly
b) It is code free
c) It is non disruptive
d) It is large

Answer: D
Mains Questions:
Q1. The Congress’s minimum income pledgeis high on ambition but low on detail. Comment