15/05/09
nitish kumar votes for the dole
nitish kumar demands special status for bihar as his price and most of the media gleefully reports it. gleefully because the addition of one more saleable actor to the marathon election soap playing on tv channels now would mean more spice and drama to chew on in the next two days or weeks. but what all the reports failed to mention was how the bihar chief minister came down upon leakages in programmes like the pds, subsidies which went to big businesses rather than small farmers etc., before unveiling his demand that bihar be given special leeway and be allocated cash, instead of kind subsidies, by the centre which could be directly transferred to the bank accounts of poor beneficiaries' in the state. he was demanding support from the centre for, among other things, a dole. trust the media to miss the less sexy, but more important part of his speech.
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3 comments:
I guess you are missing one crucial aspect of both Nitish Kumar and Chandra Babu Naidu's votes for the doles. Their cash transfer schemes are not a substitute of everything else that the state does. They want the dole and keep everything else.
i presume that is markedly different from what you advocate.
no anoop, i am not missing anything. naidu had promised a lot more, in addition to what the state does, and the dole. nitish went far ahead than naidu and said - the poor be given cash so that they can buy whatever they need from the 'bazaar' instead of from the pds..*you* obviously missed his speech at the book launch function with meghnad desai, on the 15th.
i want govts to try the dole even if they retain all the old programmes/schemes. ultimately, it's the people who'll reject the old schemes, i'm sure. because the dole guarantees definite relief, unlike the old schemes.
CBN ended up paying a price for his dole promise. It appears that there is an undercurrent of opposition to his dole schemes from farmers who were concerned that they may not get harvesters ( as such NREGS had an impact on them)
and also by middle class people who may have thought that they wont get a cheap supply of maids etc.
Trust congress to get a fine balanace of welfare and pandering to the casteist biases in the society (as of now)
Kiran
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