Going by the Aadhaar event earlier this month in Rajasthan, the Congress Party wants to use cash transfers as a main weapon in the 2014 elections. ET outlines the work ahead to get this going, and the pros and cons of such a strategy.
It was an event by the governments of India and Rajasthan. Yet, everything about the meeting-people, flags, hoardings, public mobilisation-at Dudu village in Rajasthan on October 20 showed it was of the Congress, by the Congress, for the Congress.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Congress supremo Sonia Gandhi, finance minister P Chidambaram, five other cabinet ministers and Rajasthan chief minister Ashok Gehlot helicoptered down to this village on the Jaipur-Alwar highway to tell a 30,000-strong audience about cash transfers and Aadhaar. They delivered a flurry of speeches on the advantages of welfare and subsidy benefits flowing directly into people's bank accounts.
Then came five videos showing how such cash transfers, based on the unique identity number called Aadhaar, can eliminate middlemen and improve convenience for those accessing their LPG and PDS entitlements, pensions and NREGA wages. Shortly after this, Gehlot announced that soon only those with Aadhaar cards would be able to access state welfare programmes in Rajasthan. Locals say this part of Rajasthan had been seeing an Aadhaar enrolment drive in the 10 days leading up to the event.
And the event seemed choreographed to ensure participation in even greater numbers. As such, that day at Dudu revived a question doing the rounds in Delhi for some time now: is the Congress planning to use cash transfers as a key weapon in the 2014 elections at the Centre? "No doubt about it," says a Delhi-based political analyst, who did not want to be named. "Look at how Aadhaar is being pushed in Congress-ruled states-that is where they have most of their seats."
On October 25, the PM also set up a panel-headed by himself, and comprising key ministers and bureaucrats-to coordinate cash transfers. The political analyst says cash transfers is the party's answer to the anti-corruption movement. "If they can transfer the money, eliminating even half the middlemen, there will be goodwill." It was goodwill of a similar kind that brought the Congress-led UPA back to power in 2009.
Back then, it came from the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA), which assured 100 days of work in a year to every household. By 2006, the UPA-I coalition had passed this law, along with the Right To Information Act and the Forest Rights Act. Thus, it gave itself three years for these laws to be implemented on the ground, touch people's lives and translate into votes. Time is running out for the UPA-II , whose term ends in May 2014.