Chennai: Rubbishing the criticism that his party chief Rahul Gandhi would not be able to deliver on the poll promise of Rs 6,000 every month to BPL families, Congress senior P Chidambaram said the Indian economy, grown manifold over the years, was strong enough to meet the responsibility.
"India today has the capacity to implement the scheme because of the size of the economy. We could not have implemented the scheme 20 years and certainly not 40 years ago," the former Finance Minister told a press conference organised by the TNCC here on Wednesday to explain the MIGS. The Congress' poll promise would need 1.8 per cent of the GDP to deliver, he said, responding to questions why the Congress governments in the past failed to implement such schemes despite being in power multiple times.
Rahul Gandhi has made MIGS the Congress' major campaign plank for the Lok Sabha polls being held in phases between April 11 and May 19. Explaining the salient features of the ambitious project, Chidambaram said the 'Minimum Guaranteed Income Scheme' (MIGS) would benefit five crore families that are below the poverty line (BPL) and will be rolled out in phases. The promised Rs 6,000 a month would be remitted directly to the bank account of the woman member of the family and an expert team would be in place for supervising the implementation of the scheme if the Congress came to power at the Centre.
Slamming Finance Minister Arun Jaitley for criticising the scheme as 'unimplementable', the Congress senior said the government already had all the data required to identify the MIGS beneficiaries and the rest of the administrative infrastructure could be easily put in place.
"When the 100 days employment scheme (Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act) was implemented in 2009, Arun Jaitley had said it was not possible to implement the scheme…I want to ask him whether he supports or opposes MIGS," Chidambaram said.
Responding to a question, he said: "I don't wish to reply to anyone who criticises a programme intended to wipe out poverty. Wiping out poverty is 'aram' (dharma). It is the moral duty of every government in the 21st century (to eradicate poverty)". While MNREGA eradicated hunger, MIGS would wipe put poverty.
The Congress senior said MIGS would be tested in the field before being rolled out for implementation. An expert committee would be set up to design it and carry it through its different phases of implementation. "We will consult the committee before moving to the next stages", he said.
