What is good for Sonia is bad for the economy. Hypothesis 1: Sonianomics is not about the poor. It’s about wooing the non-poor #1: The Food Security Bill is exhibit A. It seeks to cover 67 percent of the population when only 22 percent of the people are below the poverty line, according to the government’s own calculations. By adding 45 percent of the non-poor to the 22 percent poor (who anyway get subsidised grain from the public distribution system even now), Sonia is effectively seeking to buy the votes of the non-poor. In fact, as Narendra Modi pointed out, by reducing the entitlements from 35 kg per household for below poverty line (BPL) cases to 25 kg, the scheme now moves from being pro-poor to pro-non-poor. #2: By far the biggest element of vote buying over UPA-1 and UPA-2 has come through the fuel subsidies on diesel, petrol, kerosene and LPG. My back-of-the-envelope calculations show that during the last nine years, and going upto 2014, the UPA would have dished out more than Rs 7,50,000 crore in petroleum subsidies either directly or by subsidies routed through ONGC, Oil India and Gail. That’s like a cash payment to every man, woman and child in India of over Rs 6,000 during UPA-1 and UPA-2. Even if we assume one third of the subsidies went to the poor, the rest of the subsidy – Rs 5,00,000 crore – was given to the non-poor. Still think Sonia Gandhi is about the poor? And we are not even talking about food and fertiliser subsidies to the non-poor.
Posted on: Sat, 17 Aug 2013 17:03:06 +0000
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