New Delhi: The Old Pension Scheme and “freebies” alone cannot win any party an election, senior Congress leader Praveen Chakravarty has said, suggesting a re-think in the party, which had made these two issues its major poll planks in this year’s assembly elections.
“I don’t believe that the Old Pension Scheme will be a swing factor for people in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections,“ Chakravarty, chairman of the All India Professionals’ Congress and head of the party’s data analytics department, said in an interview with ThePrint.
The Old Pension Scheme, or OPS, was a taxpayer-funded, defined-benefit pension scheme, where a government employee would get a pension equivalent to roughly 50 percent of their last salary on retirement. In contrast, the National Pension Scheme, or NPS — introduced in 2004 by the Atal Bihar Vajpayee government — is a voluntary scheme where the payout is based on contributions by employees (10 percent of their salary and dearness allowance) and the Union government (14 percent).
First used in the Himachal Pradesh polls last year, the return of the OPS was one of the Congress’s manifesto promises in five assembly elections since then — Karnataka, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, and Telangana.
“The Congress did well in two out of three zones in Himachal. The only zone where it did not do well had the maximum percentage of people working in the government sector,” said Chakravarty.
According to him, except for Himachal, the Congress lost three other assembly polls where the OPS was played up — Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, and Chattisgarh. In Karnataka and Telangana, where it wasn’t a major poll issue, the party won historic mandates, he said.
“There was never any evidence that the Old Pension Scheme is this big game changer in the elections….The OPS is unjust and not fair because it taxes a vast majority to pay for a small minority of privileged people,” Chakravarty said.
He also said that the promise of so-called freebies or populist welfare schemes alone is not enough to win elections. “We can’t engage in competitive promises and hope that’s enough to win. I think it is very clear that there are a lot of things that are needed. Larger narrative, credibility & trust in leadership, (and) organisation. There have to be new techniques and methods (to fight polls). A lot of these things are needed.”
Also Read: How Congress ended KCR’s rule in Telangana. ‘Congress became BJP, and BJP became Congress’
Return of NYAY?
In the 2019 general elections, then Congress president Rahul Gandhi had made NYAY, or Nyuntam Aay Yojana (Minimum income scheme), a major election promise. Under this, the Congress promised to provide an annual income of Rs 72,000 to around five crore families below the poverty line.
The gambit failed to capture the popular imagination, and the Congress has been largely silent on it since. But according to Chakravarty, who was instrumental in designing it, the party hasn’t yet given up on the idea.
“As far as 2024 is concerned we are working on absolutely new ideas,” he told ThePrint when asked if the Congress planned to revive the idea. “(But) we have absolutely not given up on the idea of NYAY. If anything, we will reinforce it, better it.”
Chakravarty said that the party would fight next year’s general elections on three major poll planks — reimagining India’s economy, reforming its social justice system, and the message of social harmony.
“Even in these five state elections, speeches of the central leadership were around these things,” he said, adding that a national caste census is the first step towards a social justice system.
He, however, concedes that to beat Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his BJP, the Congress needs “a narrative of our own”. “It cannot just be that we are not them”.
How will the INDIA bloc — the 26-party opposition alliance aimed at countering the NDA — allot seats? And will regional parties get a large enough slice of the seat-sharing pie? It depends entirely on their winnability, Chakravarty said.
“These discussions will happen at the state level,” he said. “In today’s times, there can be enough information collected from the ground that is objective based on surveys and other (such) mechanisms. To understand which party’s symbol is best suited for which seat, there are skills, intelligence, and resources available in the INDIA alliance to be able to do this and I think that its approach will work the best for India.”
(Edited by Uttara Ramaswamy)
Also Read: Wake-up calls, beneficiary mapping & younger workers — how BJP powered pro-incumbency wave in MP