Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi tore into the BJP-led NDA government’s Kashmir and demonetisation policies on Friday morning here, even as he frontally targeted Prime Minister Narendra Modi for basing his entire policy-making strategy on TRPs.
“The country has suffered tremendous damage as a result of the vanity and incompetence of our PM,” he said, while addressing party MPs at the Congress Parliamentary Party (CPP) meeting in Parliament House.
Tacit change
This is the first time Mr. Gandhi has chaired the CPP, an unspoken acknowledgement that he will soon officially head the party. Ailing party president Sonia Gandhi was not present.
Excerpts of his speech were later aired by TV channels though such meetings are generally out of bounds for the media.
Former finance minister P. Chidambaram started the proceedings with a clinical analysis of the demonetisation move, stating that it has not just caused untold hardships for ordinary people but has some dangerous implications for the economy. MPs thereafter sought clarifications on the issue.
The concluding speech was made by Mr.Gandhi. “The Congress”, he said, “never gave India a Prime Minister who was a prisoner of his own image… a Prime Minister who was ready to inflict such tremendous suffering on the people of India to protect his own persona… a Prime Minister who based his entire policy-making strategy on TRPs…a Prime Minister who bypassed the experience of those sitting in the institutions.”
The Congress-led UPA government’s Pakistan policy had resulted in the global isolation of Pakistan, and brought peace — and tourists — to Kashmir, Mr Gandhi said. Yet, “Today the same person who used to ridicule us sits silently while Kashmir burns. Narendra Modi will be judged by history as the man who gifted massive political space to anti-India forces by creating an opportunistic political alliance between the BJP and the PDP.. . created the political vacuum that gives terrorists space to operate.”
Consequently, Mr Gandhi said, India’s” brave soldiers and their families are paying the price. Eighty-five soldiers have been martyred…the highest number of men we have lost in almost a decade.”
The Congress had supported the surgical strikes against Pakistan, he said, while pointing out that “Policy cannot be based on ad hoc responses to events. The price of not thinking actions through is simply too high. .. There have been 21 major attacks and hundreds of ceasefire violations since the strikes.”
Within two days of Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar claiming success, Mr Gandhi said, “Terrorists walked into the most highly defended army base in Jammu, straight into the officer's mess and murdered our officers and men in cold blood.. Are these young men just statistics destined to gather dust in the records of the government of India?”
Having failed to get back the 94 per cent of black money held in gold, real estate and dollars stashed abroad, the Prime Minister, Mr Gandhi said, “decided to experiment with the financial future of 1.3 billion people. Instead of attacking black money, he attacked the very foundations of our economy.”
RBI Governor
The Congress vice president claimed Mr Modi didn’t keep his chief economic advisor in the loop and dismissed the former RBI governor’s advice who had “warned him of impending devastation”.
Quoting the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE), he pointed out that Mr Modi’s “impromptu experiment has already cost India Rs. 1.28 lakh crore in lost wages, cost of printing and logistics.”
This “catastrophic” experiment, that has been condemned by every economist “of any repute”, has, Mr Gandhi underscored, “created a massive, new, corrupt black market that is working overtime to convert black money to white”. It will devastate GDP growth, crush migrant labourers and farmers and destroy industries, he added
