Sonia lauds Abhijit Banerjee for winning Nobel; Rahul says he helped Congress frame 'Nyay'

The Congress has launched a scathing attack on Prime Minister Narendra Modi ever since Indian American economist Abhijit Banjeree won the prestigious Nobel award for his experimental approach to alleviating global poverty. Banerjee was among the economists who helped the grand old party prepare — ahead of Lok Sabha polls — its minimum income plan called NYAY which later came to be its most significant proposition if it were to come to power.

Catchy slogans and campaigns were designed around it, and the NYAY scheme formed the bedrock of all speeches by top leaders in the run-up to the Lok Sabha elections held in May this year. Although the outcome of the election was far from what Congress had anticipated, there was a view that the result would have been starkly different had the NYAY scheme been announced a little earlier in the campaign. Many pundits also blasted Congress for failing to take the message to the grassroots and blamed it for its failure.

The focus returned to NYAY hours after Abhijit Banerjee was named for Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences. Former Congress president Rahul Gandhi congratulated him for winning the Nobel in Economics. He, however, added that it was Abhijit who helped “conceptualise NYAY that had the power to destroy poverty and boost the Indian economy”.