Swarna Bharat Party has a three-pronged policy on poverty alleviation. First, we believe in radically transforming the governance system and policies (such as liberating the education and farm sectors and abolishing the IAS) to create opportunities for the poor.

Second, there will necessarily remain a few who suffer from infirmities, physical, psychological or cultural and require support – despite the best efforts to create opportunity. For such people, we don’t need cosmetic “programmes” that divert taxpayer money to bureaucrats and politicians or create useless assets that no one uses. We need to directly eliminate dire poverty. Our party is committed to directly providing a top-up income transfer to those below the poverty line to ensure that no one starves.

Third, once these two are in place, all other anti-poverty programmes must be completely shut down.

For well over 20 years now I’ve been arguing for a direct transfer scheme for the poorest of the poor to instantly eliminate poverty. Some of the earliest proposals in the Indian government’s records on this subject are surely mine, such as my 1999 detailed proposal to NC Saxena, the secretary to the Planning Commission to pilot such a scheme in Meghalaya where I was a commissioner to the government. I also tried to persuade Ashok Saikia in the Vajpayee PMO to take up such a project, but there was no uptake. I therefore resigned and decided to work for reforms from outside the government.

But I didn’t give up tried to persuade Vinay Sahasrabuddhe who drafted BJP’s 2014 manifesto and Congress through Nandan Nilekani. I even handed over SBP’s manifesto to Jitendra Singh of BJP in 2014 and our party sent it again to Mr Modi in 2016. But no one was bothered about India’s poor. To that extent, I’m glad that Rahul Gandhi has taken up the direct transfer concept from our party’s manifesto but the programme he has proposed is actually quite different to what is actually needed.

I understand that the full details of the Nyuntam Aay Yojana (Nyay) are not yet known. However, it is understood that this would directly transfer Rs 6,000 a month to selected beneficiaries’ bank accounts. Nyay will be implemented in two phases and exclude certain people based on the Social Economic Caste Census 2011. It is estimated that around 5 crore families will be benefited – around 25 crore people in all, ie about 20 per cent of India’s population.

I will await the Congress manifesto for details but there are a few essential points I’d like to make at this stage.

First, the scheme must be a top-up, not a flat amount. I disagree completely with the idea of a flat transfer of Rs 6,000 per month. The idea would be to bring everyone up to the poverty line, not to provide some people a boost above the poverty line while others remain behind. Every poor family in India must be immediately lifted above extreme poverty. Some families might need just Rs 1000 per month, others might need Rs 10,000. A top-up programme is also dramatically cheaper than a flat transfer, since only a small proportion is in extreme desperation, therefore most will need much less than Rs 6,000 per month.

Second, while the initial transfer can be done on the basis of the 2011 Census, the data needs to be updated and informed by an annual income tax return lodged by every family. The details of this comprehensive exercise are provided in our party’s manifesto.

Third, this needs to be an ongoing programme to support the poor in perpetuity but the principle must be to top-up to an extremely frugal level. There will otherwise be strong political incentives to increase the amount every year and create a welfare state which will badly distort work incentives and productivity, exacerbating the socialist quagmire that India finds itself in.

Fourth, the Nyay programme must necessarily have two other associated components: complete privatisation of schools with school vouchers only for the poor, and complete privatisation of the health system with health insurance vouchers only for the poor.

The Congress party has been the main creator of poverty in India’s post-independence history through its adoption of socialism. It continues to remain committed to socialism but that is a deadly disease that only exacerbates poverty and creates injustice. It is high time for Congress to reject socialism outright and adopt liberalism, the only system that is proven to dramatically improve opportunities for the poor.

The entire suite of reforms in SBP’s manifesto needs to be adopted, not just the direct transfer of funds to the poorest. For instance, unless the Congress party liberalises the farm sector, among others, it will end up generating more poverty instead of eliminating it. The Congress party also needs to totally reform the bureaucracy and get rid of the IAS and other such tenured services and create an accountable public service for India. I can only suggest that Congress party, which has demonstrated complete incapacity since 1947 to implement economic and governance reforms, copy SBP’s manifesto in full, for that is the complete solution to India’s many problems.

Of course, our party would still not support or have anything to do with the Congress party or any of its candidates, given my personal experience of the extreme corruption practiced at the very top in the Congress party. In 2012 I had said in a public meeting of 10,000 people that Congress is a party of traitors and I continue to hold that view. Our party also rejects the mahagathbandhan, which is a bunch of socialists coming together against another socialist party. Let the people of India pick the best candidate on offer in their constituency and reject all socialist parties.