-The Hindu
Party may have missed target section
The Congress had seemed to be in a relatively better position when the election year began, but its efforts to create an anti-incumbency atmosphere in the country were derailed by the Narendra Modi-led BJP government post-Pulwama and Balakot.
Having struggled to counter the dominant narrative of nationalism and Hindutva created by the ruling party, the Congress announced its minimum income guarantee, or NYAY, scheme for the poorest families on March 25 to wrest the momentum back from the BJP just two weeks before the start of the election. Through this rather late announcement, the Congress hoped to create a counter-narrative by bringing the focus of the election back to unemployment and economic issues, as well as to project itself as pro-poor.
So did NYAY prove to be a game changer for the party and its allies? Did it resonate with the voters? Not as much as the Congress would have liked, perhaps. Even as the post-poll survey conducted by Lokniti found a greater awareness of the proposed scheme among voters than during the pre-poll survey conducted in late March, when the scheme had only just been announced, the survey found that information about the scheme had yet not reached many of the voters it was actually supposed to benefit. While overall, 59% of the respondents nationally were found to be aware of NYAY, up from 48% in the pre-poll survey, among the poorest voters (those belonging to households earning only up to Rs.3,000 a month) who stand to benefit from it the most, awareness levels about NYAY registered only a marginal increase of two percentage points (from 44% to 46%) during the past one month. This means that despite popularising the scheme through advertisements, banners and hoardings, the Congress may not have been able to get the information through to an important section of its target audience in time. On the other hand, awareness about the NYAY scheme was found to be the greatest among the higher income groups who have traditionally been the core supporters of the BJP and are not going to be the beneficiaries of the scheme.
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