Rahul Gandhi on Thursday said the Congress was committed to compensating women for their contribution to their families and for nurturing young Indians, thereby protecting the nation's future.
The Wayanad MP, who addressed three election rallies in Kerala, said in Kannur that women from poor families would be compensated with Rs 1 lakh every year through the Mahalakshmi Scheme, included in the party’s manifesto.
Rahul said women must look at the benefit not as a gift but as something they have earned.
Rahul had prefaced his remarks by saying that men might not like what the Congress proposed to do once elected to power.
He then stressed that women with day jobs work outside the home just like the men, and then have to put in extra hours tending to their families.
"The fact is that if a man works eight hours, a woman works 16 hours. And she looks after our children. For protecting the future of India and for looking after our children, we have never compensated her," Rahul said, drawing loud applause from an audience that had braved the midsummer heat to listen to him.
"The government has never said, 'We appreciate the extra eight hours you work compared to men'. And so the next government is going to be the first in Indian history to take that step."
He added: "Please do not think this is a gift that the government is giving. This is not a gift. This is compensation for the work our women do eight hours each day."
Rahul said the Congress’s promise to legislate a 50 per cent job reservation for women in all government and public sector understandings was part of the same desire to recognise women’s role in nation-building.
"We are going to double the salary of Anganwadi and Asha workers (community health activists)," he said.
Rahul accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his policies of favouring the rich to the destruction of small and medium-scale businesses and, with them, lakhs of jobs.
"We in the Congress party have studied this problem. The single biggest reason (for the large-scale unemployment) is that small and medium businesses have been destroyed by the Prime Minister," he said.