Economists Angus Deaton & Thomas Piketty behind Rahul Gandhi’s minimum income promise: Report

Nobel Prize winning British economist Angus Deaton and French economist Thomas Piketty are the brains behind Congress president Rahul Gandhi’s minimum income promise, reported The Print.

Congress leaders claimed that the advice from the duo are behind party’s ambitious poll promise of minimum income guarantee (MIG) to the poor, report said.

"It’s born out of sound economic thinking. A lot of research, consultations and data analysis has gone into the MIG promise… In fact, the idea of MIG first took shape at a dinner hosted by Praveen Chakravarty (chairperson of the Congress’ Data Analytics Department) in his Mumbai home for P. Chidambaram in December. There have been a lot of deliberations with well-known economists around the world after that,” a senior party functionary was quoted as saying in the report while adding that veteran leader Manmohan Singh is also in support of the idea.