{"id":37287,"date":"2019-03-25T13:22:47","date_gmt":"2019-03-25T13:22:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=37287"},"modified":"2019-03-25T13:22:47","modified_gmt":"2019-03-25T13:22:47","slug":"congress-chiefs-election-pledge-minimum-income-for-poor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=37287","title":{"rendered":"Congress chief&#8217;s election pledge: Minimum income for poor"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"body-200771816342556199\" readability=\"117\">\n<p class=\"speakable\">The main opposition Congress party will give 72,000 rupees ($1,045) to each of India&#8217;s poorest families every year if voted back to power, its chief said on Monday, in what he called a &#8220;final assault on poverty&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"speakable\">Congress President Rahul Gandhi, facing a tough opponent in Prime Minister Narendra Modi in general elections set for April and May, told reporters the programme would benefit 250 million of a population of 1.3 billion.<\/p>\n<p class=\"speakable\">&#8220;It&#8217;s an extremely powerful, extremely dynamic, extremely well-thought-through idea,&#8221; Gandhi said, calling the programme a fiscally prudent scheme to be rolled out in phases.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We&#8217;ve done all the calculations, we&#8217;ve asked the best economists. They all backed us on this idea. We are going to implement it,&#8221; he said at a news conference in the New Delhi.<\/p>\n<p>A Congress official said any family earning less than 12,000 rupees ($174) a month would receive 6,000 rupees ($87) every month.<\/p>\n<p>Modi&#8217;s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) dismissed the plan as an enticement on which Congress cannot deliver.<\/p>\n<p>The number of Indians below the poverty line had fallen to about 65 million, or 5 percent of the population, from 22 percent in 2011, the BJP said on social network Twitter after Gandhi\u2019s news conference.<\/p>\n<p>India is home to about 70 million people living in extreme poverty, which is defined as living on less than $1.9 a day.<\/p>\n<p>The BJP pledged direct cash support of 6,000 rupees ($87) a year for 120 million poor farmers and cut taxes for the middle class last month. It has also rolled out cheap health insurance for the poor.<\/p>\n<p>One analyst said the scheme needed to be designed carefully.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Large cash-transfer schemes have an important role to play in boosting incomes,&#8221; said A Prasanna, head of fixed income research at ICICI Securities in Mumbai.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;However, such schemes will be sustainable in the long run only if they are carefully designed and existing subsidies on food, fuel are subsumed into them.&#8221;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div readability=\"32\">\n<p>\n            SOURCE:<br \/>\n            <span>Reuters news agency<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The main opposition Congress party will give 72,000 rupees ($1,045) to each of India&#8217;s poorest families every year if voted back to power, its chief said on Monday, in what he called a &#8220;final assault on poverty&#8221;. Congress President Rahul Gandhi, facing a tough opponent in Prime Minister Narendra Modi in general elections set for&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-37287","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37287","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=37287"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37287\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=37287"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=37287"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=37287"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}