Minimum income guarantee: Is this Rahul's trump card to trounce Modi?
Rahul Gandhi on Monday made big promise ahead of the elections and announced a minimum income of Rs 6,000 a month or Rs 72,000 a year for 20 per cent of families belonging to the poorest category. BJP out rightly rubbished it and Finance Minister even called it another Congress "bluff". If Rahul's promise were to be implemented, it would translate into a total expenditure of Rs 3,60,000 crore (five crore multiplied by Rs 72,000) a year. And this would add around 1.9 per cent of GDP to the fiscal deficit. The incumbent BJP-led government is striving hard to rein in fiscal deficit and set a target to bring it to 3 percent of the GDP by 2020. In his Budget speech for 2018-19, Jaitley said that the NDA government brought fiscal deficit down from 4.4 percent in 2013-14 to 3.5 percent in 2017-18.
So, if Congress comes to power and goes ahead with the implementation of this scheme, what will happen to fiscal deficit? Will it be good for the economy in the long run or will it wreak havoc?