Prodigal 'Pappu's' Populist Promise Prods Paupers; Punitive Plausibility Percolates

"We have decided that every poor person in India would be guaranteed a minimum income after the Congress forms the government in 2019... No one will go hungry in India, no one will remain poor." - Rahul Gandhi
 
    That is The Scion's verbatim at a farmers rally in the central state of Chhattisgarh on Monday, Jan. 28, 2019.
    That is three days before the existing government's interim budget presentation; three months before the country goes to polls.
 
    The proposal would apparently eliminate poverty and could be executed via navigating funds currently spent on subsidy programmes that most often do not reach the poor.
    Who are this poor? The people living on less than Rs. 32 a day in rural areas and Rs. 47 a day in urban areas? Just them?
    What about those, who keep skipping lunches to save money to send their wards to a better school?
    What about those, who work odd hours at the expense of own health to provide better medication for ailing kin?
    What about those, who stay away from the tiniest of luxuries to dream for an own shelter?
 
    They are not poor. They are not poor because they earn more than what some diplomats defined to be called poor. Then again, it's subjective, right?
    Some people just choose to be poor. Foolish people with a handful of aspirations, ambitions and agonizingly astonishing dreams. They have a generic name too. They're called the Middle Class monkeys.
    They chatter, they grumble, they desire, they dissent. Then they go and cast their votes for someone who's not good, but just not as bad as the others available at disposal.
    And alongside the other truths of life, would carry on accepting their designated fates in the name of taxes that help build their country for the better.
    They'll pay a considerable part of their hard-earned salary in income taxes.
    They'll pay a sizable part of their earnings in service taxes in health centers, banking and financial institutions, and restaurants.

    They'll pay a substantial part of their income in value added taxes on each and every product they buy.
    And now, they'll pay some more of it to ensure no one is poor in the country.
    The problem is that the lower rung of the economic ladder in the country doesn't quite aim and the upper rung of the ladder doesn't quite bother. Well, almost always.
    So every time it comes back biting the ones who are caught in the middle -- the ones, not poor enough to expect or rich enough to expunge expectations.
    Thus far, that's the emotional rant of just another caught hanging in the middle.
 
    Now, let's greet a few numbers that underpin facts.
    Soon after the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party took a beating in some state polls early December, Mr. Rahul Gandhi announced a nationwide waiver of farm loans to appease farmers -- a crucial vote-bank as half of the nation's workforce still depends on agriculture.
    Now, Edelweiss thinks this could cost up to 3 trillion rupees, which is equivalent to 1.4 percent of India's GDP.
    For the third-largest economy in the Asian continent, which is trying hard to bring down deficit to a planned 3.1 percent by March 2020, generosity is nothing but a far-flung caricature.
    Market watchers believe more than half of last year's capital expenditure, or about 2.5 percent of GDP, was funded through state-owned companies in everything from power to railways. And, a more pragmatic estimate of the true fiscal deficit in current financial year is closer to 4.2 percent.
    So in order to ensure whatever "minimum income" again some diplomats juggle up for the real poor, who'll come to rescue? If the motherland is not in such a good shape to be the provider of all sorts, where will the funds come from?
    They'll come from the most dependable tax payers, who belong to the middle and can't escape like the ones on top, who still has an option to fly away and nest elsewhere on the globe.
    The ones at the bottom can't make noises anyway as they're the ones apparently to benefit from this propaganda pledge punting a pocketful of pennies.
 
    While this appears really hunky-dory in assuming that this might be a game-changer and make happiness shine for the poor, this is not something like a Universal Basic Income, where everyone is entitled to get a fixed income from the government. One needs to understand that.
 
    It's money -- it's coming via politicos -- and, it's India.
    Aren't we smart enough to decode this? Easy-peasy, right?

    Even if we assume for a moment the Congress with its utmost degree of honesty attempts to eradicate poverty as it's promising now, there would be an infinite number of roadblocks and potholes to implement a scheme such as this in such a complex country.
 
    The existing Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MNREGA) is also meant to serve similar ideas -- helping the needy with at least 100 days of guaranteed jobs, thus guaranteed income.
    But, did it work? Did it benefit the poor? There are innumerable documented cases across the country, where MNREGA workers never got their wages even after working, while others never got to work, and some eligible others had to pay middlemen first to ensure they get their names called for those government-assured jobs.
    Economics suggest, in a widely-agricultural rural India, where farmers get battered by operational holdings with 30 peasants farming a plot of land ideally meant for about 3, how do you evaluate who's poor in the first place!
    Anyway welfare schemes are always meant to brew corruption somewhere inside the pipeline. And then, delinquency might as well come from the recipients. Doesn't a guaranteed minimum income reduce the incentive to work? Then just in a world of vote-bank politics, there will be generations of poor families living on welfare with no intentions of coming out of it. And, a RaGa saga would continue for some years and we'll get another Bharat Ratna with the fans and followers touting like-father-like-son.
 
    So the newly-induced war-cry from the opposition, which has been trying to herd up lately to oust the existing regime, is more of a blistering bullshit than a harbinger of happiness.
    But then, critics might argue, I'm perpetually pessimistic and it's actually Baby Gandhi's one endearing endeavor to bring holistic happiness to crybaby countrymen.

[Image Courtesy - Cartoonist Satish Acharya from Google Images]