Abhijit Banerjee responds to NYAY scheme criticism; says he would have helped the BJP if it had asked him

Abhijit Vinayak Banerjee, winner of the 2019 Nobel Prize in Economics, has responded to the NYAY (or the Nyuntam Aay Yojona) criticism saying that if the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) had asked him to help them regarding any such schemes, he would have helped them too.

In an interview with The Times of India, asked whether it was a tactical error to be associated with any one political party even as an adviser, Banerjee replied: “I don’t feel defensive about it. You cannot control the spin people give to things but I also don’t like living my life thinking of every possible spin that people can give to my actions. They asked me a perfectly legitimate question – how much money would it take to implement a guaranteed income? That is a question for someone like me with some competence in looking at data and making computations. If the BJP had asked me for the same numbers I would have given it to them. I absolutely don’t believe in restricting good policy out of political prejudice…”

There has been a lot of discussion following Banerjee’s winning the Nobel Prize and former Congress president Rahul Gandhi tweeting that Banerjee had prepared the NYAY scheme for the Congress party. It is a social welfare program for the Congress party as one of their main agenda for 2019 Lok Sabha elections. The scheme promised to guarantee 20 per cent of India’s poorest families a sum of Rs. 72,000 a year if the party came to power.

The scheme faced some serious criticisms from some political leaders who said it was “absurd” and a “vote-bank tactics” of Congress to win the elections. Yesterday, Union minister Piyush Goyal said that the people of India had rejected Banerjee’s thinking in that the Congress lost the 2019 Lok Sabha elections with only 52 seats to their credit.

Goyal also said that, when the Indians have collectively rejected Banerjee’s rationale, then there was no point for the BJP government to accept it. Saying this, Goyal branded Banerjee’s ideology as left-leaning.

In the same interview, Banerjee added, “To be honest, the central government has made the right noises but many state governments have as well. Most of our business is with state governments, and across parties. Whoever is a ruling party in a state is our partner. If it is Gujarat, it is BJP, if it is West Bengal, it is Trinamool. We don’t really pick and choose states. We work wherever work is interesting and the social or economic challenge is important and worth taking on.”

He also said: “Hopefully, all of these people will not decide to become our enemies as a result of this. We are reasonably well connected to many governments and they see that we come and do our work professionally with a fair amount of commitment and patience.”