The Congress's scheme, while ambitious, is hardly a novelty in principle. Voters, especially from the rural areas, understand this all too well.
In American Football, a Hail Mary Pass is a very long forward pass, typically made in desperation, with a negligible chance of success. Teams attempting that often have no other conventional play left to level the proceedings.
With the spectacular failure to make a case of corruption over the Rafale and the inability to forge meaningful pre-poll alliances, the Congress is in dire straits as far as the general election is concerned.
Therefore, it should occasion us no surprise that last week their president Rahul Gandhi (who is facing a lot of heat in his own constituency, which has forced him to decide on contesting from an additional 'insurance' constituency) rolled out NYAY, a minimum income guarantee scheme to assure a payment of Rs 6,000 per month to the poorest 20% people in the country. This kind of a move smacks of desperation and is being roundly criticised as unworkable and impractical, not only by the BJP, but also by many sympathising economists.
Also read — 'NYAY' of Congress is Rahul Gandhi’s promise to fool voters: MP Rajeev Chandrasekhar
However, as Winston Churchill once said, a politician requires the ability to both foretell the future and then explain afterwards why it didn't happen. If you apply this cynical yardstick to the NYAY scheme, one would have to concede that the scheme, even if only a jumla, will be successful if it helps to revive the Congress's sagging electoral fortunes. Let there be no doubt in anybody's mind that the sole objective of NYAY is to help the Congress win the election. Unfortunately, even on this count, I do not see NYAY bringing any electoral dividends to the beleaguered grand old party of India. A brief analysis follows.
To begin with, since India's politics lacks a real economic right-wing party, very often the election season is an economic race to the bottom, with almost every party offering some form of incentive to woo voters from the lower income group.
Therefore, the Congress's scheme, while ambitious, is hardly a novelty in principle. Voters, especially from the rural areas, understand this all too well, and therefore, they are not likely to view this as radically different from say a farm loan waiver or the Modi government's cash subsidy scheme for small farmers. I am not arguing that these schemes are all the same, but merely that the voter is unlikely to be discerning enough to make a difference.
Also read: Is it Rs 72,000 per month or per annum, Rahul?
As it is bound to happen with all last minute efforts, there is sufficient ambiguity left in the details, especially pertaining to the financing of this scheme. But still two details confirmed by those close to it (first confirmed in the Congress manifesto released on Tuesday) are:
1) It will be jointly funded by the Centre and states.
2) Taxation burden will go up.
Both these are problematic from a campaigning viewpoint.
For NYAY to be an electoral game-changer, the Congress needed the much talked about mahagathbandhan in place before making this announcement. As counter-intuitive as it sounds, in case of a first-past-the-post multi-party electoral war, your allies form a part of your core strategy and the product you offer is largely tactical.
With the mahagathbandhan not happening, the weapon that was designed to explicitly target the NDA government, will now have to be used as an all-purpose Swiss-knife style multi-utility weapon whose target will change according to the state. It also means that in case of all non-Congress-ruled states, implementation of the electoral promise will be at the mercy of the same parties that the Congress will be fighting in the Lok Sabha elections. No wonder BSP supremo Mayawati was on the same page as the BJP in her criticism of the scheme. As the campaigning heats up, other non-BJP parties are likely to join Mayawati in their critique of this scheme.
Since the twin game-changers of demonetisation and goods and services tax (GST), a popular belief posits that the middle class is among the most disgruntled with the present government. Last year, when petrol prices went above Rs 85, the anger of the middle class was palpable. If the Congress failed to capitalise on it then due to its president's obsession with the Rafale, with NYAY, the Congress has gone out of its way to spook the same class into believing that the Congress is offering these freebies at its expense.
A large section of Hindu voters, already cynical of what they perceive as the Congress's minority appeasement, might be persuaded into shedding their usual lethargy on voting day to go out and vote for the BJP just to keep this scheme out. Op-eds by sympathetic columnists seeking 50-70% income tax on the top bracket would do nothing to assuage them of their fears. The Congress manifesto that involves "pre-sanctioned" NGOs in implementation makes the matters only worse by raising the spectre of rent-seeking from entrepreneur NGOs.
In the last week or so, the grumbling in mainstream media against the Congress for its obstinacy of going it alone in Delhi and other places is gathering stream. With Rahul going against the Left in his second seat at Wayanad the grumbling has only got louder. The consensus emerging is that the Congress would rather allow the BJP to return for a second term than play junior partner in a Third Front coalition government.
A scheme that doesn't take any of the potential allies on board would only cement such a view and in case the NDA government returns to power, the Congress might find itself to be a outcast among the opposition too. The likelihood of the Congress using NYAY to stop the Modi juggernaut is infinitesimally smaller compared to the Congress using it to prey on weaker non BJP parties, thus gaining some power with almost no damage to its principal opponent.
For the beleaguered party with decimated cadre and demotivated leadership, this might end up spelling the beginning of the end. The aforementioned Hail Mary Pass, after all, is a desperate play that fetches results very rarely. The teams that have been preparing for the big game for a long time and are willing to grind it out win almost all the time.
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