Didi’s Dole for Demonetisation
It’s raining doles in the state in the run-up to the panchayat elections
Mamata Banerjee is determined to keep the hardships of demonetisation alive in people’s minds, at least until the panchayat elections, due early 2018. The ruling Trinamool Congress’s internal information network has convinced the chief minister that the issue can be cashed in on.
Mamata was a vociferous critic through the months when the massive exercise to withdraw high-value currency notes was under way after November 2016. She announced a special package for farmers and farm workers impacted by demonetisation in April. This, according to state labour minister Moloy Ghatak, included a Rs 100 crore corpus for farmers and Rs 250 crore for cash assistance to labourers.
Labour department officials claim Rs 150 crore has already been utilised for one-time Rs 50,000 grants to bring back workers who had migrated from the state. With funds still left, they said, the scheme will continue through financial year 2017-18. However, going by the district magistrates’ list of genuine beneficiaries, only about 10 per cent of the Rs 250 crore has been utilised.
“The objective was to record in the state assembly that people in Bengal had suffered untold hardship, and were being bailed out with financial assistance. This is nothing but bluff,” says Abdul Mannan, leader of the Opposition in the state assembly, insisting no one in his constituency had
MAMATA ALSO PLANS FREE INSURANCE AND MATERNITY BENEFITS FOR WORKERS IN THE UNORGANISED SECTOR
received even a paisa.
Biswanath Chakrabarty, political science professor at Rabindra Bharati University, concurs: “The response was so poor that MLAs have been asked to distribute the fund among party workers (to show larger numbers of beneficiaries).” A Trinamool Congress MLA, requesting anonymity, said that the state government had perhaps failed to reach many affected labourers because they had migrated and could not be contacted.
The scheme for farmers seems to have fared better. Agriculture minister Purnendu Bose says close to a million of the worst-hit farmers had been given assistance to repay crop loans and input costs. He explained this was to keep the farmers from falling into a cyclical debt trap. West Bengal was the only state to announce a special demonetisation package, he pointed out.
The Trinamool Congress clearly hopes to use the doles to bolster its ‘pro-poor’, ‘pro-farmer’ image as it prepares to take on the BJP in the panchayat elections. Using the ‘negatives of demonetisation’ as its main plank, the party plans to requisition the services of nearly 100,000 folk artists to spread its word. Curiously, though, many of the folk artists are beneficiaries of the state’s Lok Prasar Prakalpa scheme.
This apart, the chief minister also plans to roll out other schemes, including a ‘no premium’ insurance cover of Rs 5 lakh for a fifth of the state’s population and three months of maternity leave for contract workers and workers in the unorganised sector. Notably, the state’s annual social welfare budget is already at Rs 20,000 crore.