{"id":25502,"date":"2020-05-16T17:24:11","date_gmt":"2020-05-16T11:54:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kashmir.today\/govt-should-transfer-money-directly-to-the-needy-people-says-rahul-gandhi\/"},"modified":"2020-05-16T17:24:11","modified_gmt":"2020-05-16T11:54:11","slug":"govt-should-transfer-money-directly-to-the-needy-people-says-rahul-gandhi-th","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/?p=25502","title":{"rendered":"Govt. should transfer money directly to the needy people, says Rahul Gandhi"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Rahul Gandhi repeated his earlier assertion that exiting the lockdown was not an event or an on-off switch.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Government of India should not act as a sahukar (money lender) to be offering loans to citizens instead of helping them with direct cash transfer, former Congress president Rahul Gandhi said on Saturday and appealed to Prime Minister Narendra Modi to rethink his economic stimulus package.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Interacting with journalists of regional media via video conferencing, Mr Gandhi said as an Opposition leader trying to pressure on the government to directly transfer money into people\u2019s hands and warned that an \u2018economic storm\u2019 was on its way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Repeating his earlier assertion that exiting the lockdown was not an event or an on-off switch, the Congress leader said the government must get out it \u2018intelligently\u2019 that protects both India\u2019s economy as well as the vulnerable sections.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI don\u2019t want to make a political statement but I have a serious reservation about the nature of the package that the Government has given and I would like the Government to reconsider,\u201d Mr Gandhi said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI would like to appeal to the Government of India that you can surely offer loans but Mother India cannot act like a sahukar (money lender) to her children. Mother India should directly transfer money into the hands of her children. The migrant labourer walking on the street needs money, not debt. The farmer who is suffering needs money, not debt\u2026If we do not, this will become a catastrophic problem,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mr Gandhi, who had conceived the nyuntam aay yoana [NYAY] or minimum income guarantee before the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, once pitched for it to be used to hep the poor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cDo NYAY temporarily if you don\u2019t want to do it permanently. But please start putting money into the small businesses, farmers, migrants\u2019 bank accounts because if we do not then we will have a catastrophic result,\u201d he said, adding it would cost the government \u20b965,000-70,000 crores.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Congress leader said though they have suggested doubling of work days to 200 days under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MNREGA), for migrant workers in urban workers only a monthly cash transfer of \u20b97,500 can help.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is heartbreaking to see millions of people walking on the highways without food and water, Mr Gandhi added and offered condolences to numerous tragedies migrant labourers have faced.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis is a challenging problem and I don\u2019t want to resort to finger pointing. I want to say we have to all help the people who are walking on the streets. The situation is that the BJP is in government and they have the tools. So, they have a bigger responsibility. It\u2019s also our duty as we are in the Opposition. All of us jointly have to help them,\u201d Mr Gandhi said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Senior Congress Ahmed Patel, however, directly attacked the Centre over the migrants issue. \u201cMigrant crisis is now as big as corona pandemic itself. Govt cannot be a bystander as poor either go hungry or lose their lives in accidents. Speeches are not a solution. \u20b91000 cr of PM care funds must reach their hands. If need be govt must use Army to help migrants reach safely,\u201d Mr Patel tweeted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With inputs from <\/em>The Hindu<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Rahul Gandhi repeated his earlier assertion that exiting the lockdown was not an event or an on-off switch. The Government of India should not act as a sahukar (money lender) to be offering loans to citizens instead of helping them with direct cash transfer, former Congress president Rahul Gandhi said on Saturday and appealed to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":18594,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25502","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-national"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25502","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=25502"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25502\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=25502"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=25502"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=25502"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}