‘BJP’s majoritarian project crippled economy’

Linking the economic slowdown to the ruling BJP’s politics, the Congress said on Tuesday that the saffron party’s project to turn India into a majoritarian nation has “completely and absolutely crippled” the Indian economy.

Condemning the “prolonged detention” of former finance minister P Chidambaram, it said the BJP has put a person, who presented a dream budget and took care of the economy when it was in crisis, under arrest.

Fundamentals shaky

Party spokesperson and former Minister Manish Tewari told reporters at a press conference that the fundamentals of Indian economy are in danger — be it savings, expenditure, credit off-take or investments.

“People keep their money in banks thinking it is safe. When banks do scams like the PMC bank, people lose faith,” he said.

Citing an article appeared in The Hindu by Parakala Prabhakar, Tewari said the senior economist has expressed serious concerns on the state of Indian economy.

“The current state of the economy is a man-made tragedy. NDA-BJP Government has manufactured current economic crisis through inaction and policies pursued over past five years,” he said.

He said the Centre neglected a letter written by Nobel laureate economist Abhijit Banerjee and 108 other economists to Prime Minister Narendra Modi in March, accusing that the Centre is fudging economic figures.

“Former late Finance Minister had written a blog calling Abhijit Banerjee a compulsive contrarian, while the world chose to give him a Nobel prize,” he said.

Denial mode

He said the Centre is still in denial mode about the slowdown. “In the first four months of 2019-20, fiscal outward remittances are already at $5.8 billion. This is equivalent to the entire fiscal outward remittances during the five years of the UPA Government during 2009-14,” he said. On the PMC bank crisis, he said Sanjay Gulati, who invested ₹90 lakh in the bank, died of a heart ailment after he understood that only ₹10,000 from his deposit could be withdrawn.

“They have undermined institutions — two Governors of the RBI had to leave in the most ignominious of circumstances, the credibility and the integrity of India’s economic data today is suspect and so therefore, under those circumstances, there is an atmosphere of insecurity in the country. If the Government would have listened to sane economic advice given by people, who understand the economy and not created the spectre of fear, terror and intimidation, where even less than middle level businessmen now prefer to live and work abroad as non-resident Indian, we would have been in the condition that we are in and our apprehension is that we are not going to be able to come out of this economic crisis because the government has absolutely no clue about how the economy has to be handled and the editorial in yesterday’s TheHindu , I think, perhaps, is the most incisive signal of that very deep economic crisis,” Tewari said.

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