UID based Direct Cash Transfer Scheme is facing severe opposition from social activists and politicians.
“Direct cash transfer is a terrible lie as poor people will not be able to access their accounts in which the government will transfer the money,” independent legal researcher Usha Ramanathan said at a ‘People’s Assembly’.
“When pension of the people does not reach on time, what is the guarantee that cash will transferred to their accounts on time?” she said.
Activists Medha Patkar, Aruna Roy and Nikhil Dey also criticised the scheme and said the government wanted to end the public distribution system which would benefit the corporations.
The activist had gathered at the ‘People’s Assembly’ organised by non-government organisations in the national capital.
They said that in the name of direct cash transfer through unique ‘Aadhaar’ numbers, the government wanted to just enrol people so that they could decide who were poor and who were not.
Communist Party of India leader D. Raja said that his party was opposed to the UPA government’s scheme to directly transfer cash to beneficiaries of subsidies and social schemes.
Raja, a CPI member in the Rajya Sabha, said the government had plans to extend the cash transfer scheme to food and cooking gas subsidies. This would hurt the poor, he said.
“In a country like India, the government has to give subsidy on foodgrain and fertilizers. The poor cannot be left to the mercy of market forces. The government cannot do away with subsidies. Its policies have failed,” Raja said.
He said the poor get foodgrain through the public distribution system but the cash transfer scheme will weaken the PDS.
“We want to streamline and universalise PDS… Definitely, we will raise it (direct cash transfer) in parliament,” Raja told IANS.
He said the government should explain how cash transfer “was not a bribe to people”.
The Communist Party of India-Marxist has also opposed the direct transfer scheme, saying that the rules were weighted against the poor.
The party said in a statement that the scheme was in favour of the government’s obsessive commitment to cut subsidies to working people.
Earlier, Bharatiya Janata Party leader Prakash Javadekar and Communist Party of India-Marxist leader Brinda Karat joined the chorus in attacking the scheme.
Referring to the government plans to extend the cash transfer scheme to food and fertilizers, the CPI-M said the money transferred would not cover the increased costs of foodgrain.
The Congress has termed the government’s big-ticket plan to directly transfer cash to various social welfare beneficiaries a “game-changer”, and a “politically revolutionary” step.