New Delhi:

Reacting to Jairam Ramesh’s remarks calling the Atal Pension Yojana an “ill-designed scheme”, Union Finance Minister Niramala Sitharaman today lashed out at the Congress general secretary and said the party would rather poor people not Should have pensions so that they are forced to rely on government handouts, which makes them dependent on “dynastic politicians”.

The Congress party today attacked the Modi government over the Atal Yojana Pension Scheme, saying it was a “very poorly designed scheme” and a “paper tiger” that required officials to deceive and force people to participate.

Slamming Congress for its criticism of the Atal Pension Yojana, Ms Sitharaman said: “Jairam Ramesh, who is known for using verbal sophistry to hide the truth on the Atal Pension Yojana issue, has either bad intentions or a lack of understanding of the fundamentals of a well-designed pension scheme. I know nothing about principles.”

She further said that the Atal Pension Yojana is designed based on the best practice choice architecture and premium payments will continue automatically unless the subscriber opts out.

“This is a well thought out and beneficial feature that is in the best interest of our subscribers. Instead of having to decide every year whether to continue, they have to make the decision to stop. This has led many of them to make the right decision and Saving money for subscribers. They retire,” she posted on X.

“Richard Thaler (2017 Nobel Prize winner in economics) and Cass Sunstein (a professor who worked in the Obama administration) are best known for their book Nudge, which explains the importance of designing public Proper ‘choice architecture’ is needed when planning,” she said.

“@Jairam_Ramesh calls it a fixed income pension. He didn’t bother to check the facts. The Indian government guarantees a minimum return of at least 8% under APY, irrespective of prevailing interest rates and returns. This is an attractive guaranteed minimum return. GoI pays a subsidy to PFRDA to make up for the shortfall in actual returns. Higher pension payments are made to APY subscribers if their contributions earn a higher return on investment: in fact, returns are currently higher than 8%, ” she added.

“@Jairam_Ramesh says people were ‘blinded and coerced’ into participating! Blinding is what @INCIndia has always done – in the name of vote bank politics or minority appeasement. Coercion was used to get @TheOfficialSBI ex-chairman Shri RK Talwar to resign Because he refused to give loans to the dynastic favorite,” she said.

The finance minister said this was evident in the case of subsidy schemes targeting the poor and lower middle class insofar as most pension accounts were at lower levels.

“Indeed, it shows how targeted the program is. If it were at the high end, it would be surprising! The elitist mentality that the dynasty and its minions constantly have in mind for the upper echelons of society, perhaps, blinds them to this obvious Fact. @INCIndia prefers that poor people should not have pensions so that they are forced to depend on government handouts which makes them dependent on dynastic politicians,” she added.

Earlier, Congress general secretary Jairam Ramesh said the plan was “an apt reflection of the Modi government’s policymaking: big administration with very little real benefit to the people”.

Ramesh said in a post on ‘.

“Just a day later, it emerged that as many as a third of the scheme’s subscribers had joined the scheme without ‘explicit permission’ from officials to meet quotas,” he shared with the media about X Report.

Nearly 83 per cent of subscribers receive a minimum pension of Rs 1,000 as monthly pension contributions are low and “not noticed” by the beneficiaries, he said.

“The ‘flagship’ Atal Pension Yojana is a very poorly designed scheme, a paper tiger that requires officials to trick and force people into participating. It aptly embodies the Modi government’s policymaking: headline management, with little real benefit. Reach the people!” he said.

The Union Finance Minister on Sunday welcomed the Centre’s Atal Pension Yojana and said 5.26 lakh people in Bengaluru alone have benefited from the scheme.

Speaking at an informal interaction organized by Thinkers Forum, Sitharaman said, “Bengaluru alone, the Atal Pension Yojana has benefited 5.26 lakh poor people aged 60 and above. As many as 1.95 lakh houses have been sanctioned for the city and rural areas. Bengaluru, under Prime Minister Awas Yojana, has sanctioned a total of 1.95 lakh houses. Under Swachh Bharat Abhiyan, wholesale toilets of Rs 11 crore or more have been built across India, with Bengaluru having built 28,075 A family toilet.

Atal Pension Yojana is the government’s flagship social security scheme launched eight years ago.